


Different From Memory

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Category: Inception (2010), Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Character of Color, Lucid Dreaming, Memory Alteration, Multi, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-02-07
Packaged: 2017-11-28 13:54:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/675141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The alien race known as the 456 demanded 10% of the world's children. At the same time, the British government put kill orders on Torchwood Three and extracted something from Ianto Jones' mind. He knows the best people in dream share, and they're about to get to the bottom of the entire conspiracy. If they can make it out of Ianto's mind unscathed...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hiding In Plain Sight

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Inception Big Bang, with [music and video here!](http://reasonandmusic.livejournal.com/19756.html)
> 
> Fills the following prompt: [Arthur and Ianto are old friends (how they know each other is up to you, but the suit boys must be friends, it's too perfect!). After Children of Earth, Ianto lives but Rhys does not. When our Torchwood trio discovers that they've been extracted, Ianto calls up Arthur, who brings Ariadne and Eames in to help find out what's happened. As they uncover the truth, danger threatens and romance blooms. ](http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/13659.html?thread=30535003#t30535003)
> 
> Post-movie for Inception; while the film was released in 2010, there is no specific year given for the events. Children of Earth takes place in July 2009, and this story starts with Day Four but then diverges from it. To make the two timelines match up, assume that the Fischer job occurred in early 2009.

The "terrorist" bomb that had blown up Roald Dahl Plass had left a huge crater in its wake. The lower levels of Torchwood Three were still intact, as the entire Hub was underground. UNIT and MI5 could try to take over the Plass, but there was no way to get into the bowels of Torchwood Three. When Captain Jack Harkness had been the only member of the team left alive at the millennium, the first thing he had done was to change over all of the passcodes. Jack knew that no one left from Torchwood One, MI5 or UNIT could possibly get down into the lower archive levels without his codes.

Except that somehow they did.

He was holed up in a personal safe house that no agency knew about with Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones. She was a near catatonic wreck; her husband Rhys Williams had agreed to head home when she insisted on it, and the entire neighborhood had been consumed in a fire. They could only assume it was the same government agents that had attempted to kidnap and kill her, assuming that Gwen was still with him, or because they guessed that he had the video footage that they were planning to blackmail the cabinet with. Either way, Rhys was dead. Jack could only imagine the pain she was going through. As often as he had lost loved ones over the years, the pain of those losses weren't as fresh by now. If Ianto hadn't left Thames House when Jack told him to... No, he didn't even want to imagine what that would feel like.

Ianto did mention that he had been attacked and knocked out after leaving Jack. He came to in a dingy alley way, roughed up but still alive. He felt groggy for an hour or so afterward, and could only recall dimly what he had dreamed of. "The Hub may have featured, but we were going into the Archives to find more information on the 456..."

Jack rubbed his jaw tiredly. "Fuck. Is dream share a viable technology in this time? I forget."

"It's not widely known or used," Ianto replied evenly, accented voice cautious. "Is that what you think happened, Jack?"

"It would explain why you dreamed of the Hub and woke up in an alley. It would explain why they haven't killed you yet. My mind is militarized in ways they can't even guess, but yours wouldn't be. They'd be able to extract anything they wanted from you." Jack sat down beside Ianto, and after a moment's hesitation put his hand on the younger man's arm. "There are so many things in the Archives, too many levels, too many secrets. There's no catalogue, so there's no way to tell what they were after. If they didn't get it, or MI5 wants more information from you, you could be at risk."

"I know what's in the Archives," Ianto said in clipped tones. He tapped his temple. "My memory is very good, and I've spent considerable time reorganizing it. Tosh didn't finish putting the catalogue into Mainframe, so my memory is the only complete copy."

Jack went very still at Ianto's words. Ianto was always so calm and reserved, never revealing the inner turmoil or darker thoughts that he could possess. He hid behind the tea boy persona, though his dark eyes picked up everything. Jack had always been drawn to dark hair and pressed suits, and Ianto had hit those kinks effortlessly.

"We'll need to find out exactly what information they might have extracted. And get into the levels below the Hub."

"That will be difficult, given the various agencies that are patrolling the ruins." Ianto's tone was dry as ever, and he rose stiffly from his seated position. "Gwen is in no condition right now to go through the ruins. You're lucky she even got the manipulator when she did."

Neither discussed Rhys' death. Jack blamed MI5 for that, and knew that they were likely the ones behind the extraction. _If_ it was even done, though it seemed more and more probable the more Jack thought about it. He stood as well and pushed his hands into his pockets. "We'll need to try to figure out what was extracted," he told Ianto. "We can worry about the Hub later, when the 456 are gone and we're definitely safe. They're going to take the children. I made a mistake all those years ago, and I mean to fix it now."

Ianto turned and looked at Jack with a blank expression. His lips thinned slightly after a moment, as if he was weighing his options before speaking. Jack found it fascinating; he had always known there were things he didn't know about Ianto, and seeing the proof of that always sent a thrill through him. After living so long, it was difficult to get that feeling. "Then I know who to contact to help us."

***

Arthur laid low after the Fischer job, though there weren't even whispers about inception after its completion. Ariadne finished her degree, though he could tell that the thrill of real world design was gone. The allure of dream share was too strong for her, and he felt partly responsible for that. He could lay the bulk of the blame on Cobb, but Ariadne was a grown woman and able to choose for herself. She was aware of the risks of dream share, and decided that she was willing to risk it all for the sake of building. As much as Arthur was sorry she was now thoroughly involved in the dream share underworld, he was also thankful for it. Because she didn't have contacts in the business other than the team for the Fischer job, he could remain in contact with her for jobs.

And if there was a more personal reason for that, Arthur certainly wasn't going to say anything about it.

He normally kept business and pleasure separate. After being on the run from the US military and then from various international organizations with Cobb, it was second nature not to make too many attachments. Spending so much time with Ariadne to teach her the basics about dream share and paradoxical architecture made him rethink that possibility for a moment. Only a moment, given that he was still a fugitive. He couldn't help touching her a bit more than strictly necessary and stealing a kiss on the second level of the Fischer job. She wasn't opposed to the attentions, and they had actually spent most of the excess time on the first level together. She was charming and Arthur liked her more than he initially thought he would. It could easily go farther if he let it, but even now he was a little reluctant. Ariadne could still back out of dream share. She could still have a normal life if she wanted it. She could see all this as a mistake and return to the real world.

So far she didn't seem to want to, but she _could,_ and Arthur didn't know if he wanted to deal with that loss. He'd lost too much already, though he would never let on how much it had hurt him.

Arthur was startled from his tangled thoughts by an alert on his phone. It was from one of his older and more secure numbers, forwarded through various channels. He hadn't heard that particular ring tone in years, and he found himself frowning as he picked up. "Yes?"

"Good, you're still alive," came the familiar accented voice. "I haven't been able to reach my cousin, so I was afraid you were all dead."

"Ianto," Arthur said, shoulders relaxing a fraction. "You know me. I find a way to survive just about anything."

There was a sharp bark of laughter on the other end of the line, and the bitterness lacing it was new. Arthur had last spoken with Ianto just before the Battle of Canary Wharf, when Torchwood One was destroyed. Ianto hadn't responded to any of Arthur's messages after that, though Arthur knew he had survived it. He had stopped pressing Ianto, and assumed that his old friend would find him when he was ready.

Somehow, Arthur didn't think this was going to be a social call.

"I may have been the subject of an extraction," Ianto said without preamble. "Is there a way for you to tell what's been taken?"

Arthur blew out a breath. "Depends on how skillful the extraction team was."

"MI5."

"Fuck, Ianto," Arthur replied, gripping his phone tight. His mind raced, trying to figure out who might have been involved with that team. "What the hell have you gotten yourself into?"

"You know how the children of the world are all speaking in unison," Ianto began.

"Hard to miss, even where I am," Arthur replied dryly.

Ianto never seemed to rise to sarcasm when speaking with Arthur. "How much do you know about the 456 where you are?"

"Very little," Arthur admitted. "Do you need help getting into a database or archive?"

Ianto snorted. "That's part of the problem, Arthur. With my memory, I _am_ an archive. The 456 are involved, and it's probably why I've been extracted from. I only know you and my cousin in the business, and things are rather dire here."

"Dire? How dire?" Arthur asked, echoing Ianto's phrasing. Given that Ianto was generally a master of understatement, this had to be bad.

"They're trying to kill us," Ianto told him quietly. "They destroyed the Hub and sent teams out to get the survivors."

"Where are you now? I'll get Eames, if you really need him."

"I'd rather leave you lot out of this mess. But we need to know what might have been taken and if anyone got into the lower levels of the Hub." Ianto blew out a breath. "Gwen... One of us is in a bad way. Just found out she's pregnant and now the father's dead. Worse, Rhys really shouldn't have been involved. If it was MI5, and I don't see why it wouldn't be, there are too many secrets in my head. I need to know what was stolen." He paused. "I'll text you a location. Usual code."

"You're lucky I remember it."

Ianto gave another bitter laugh. "Given what you do, it probably helps you encode the information you extract."

It did, but Arthur would never admit that to Ianto. The Welshman already thought too highly of himself sometimes.

"I'll be there with whoever we'll need to get this done," Arthur promised.

"I can't pay you," Ianto said abruptly. "It's strictly a favor."

"I know," Arthur replied in a low tone. "I'll take care of it."

"Thank you, Arthur," Ianto told him. His voice already seemed much less tense. "I know you're one of the best and you know the best. You'll be able to figure this out. Once we know what MI5 was after, we'll know what to do next."

"What about the 456?" Arthur asked.

"That's the easy part. We make sure they don't get any children."

Considering the fact that the British government was complicit with whatever the 456 were planning, it was going to be a difficult job.

***

Eames was lying on a chaise lounge beside a hotel pool in Marrakesh, soaking in a bit of late afternoon sun. He planned to return to Mombasa eventually, but it was nice not to have to run or think about where the next job would be for a while. He frowned as a shadow fell over him, and he cracked open an eye. The shadow belonged to a tall, slim man with dark hair and dark eyes. Even in the afternoon heat he was wearing a suit, though it was unbuttoned and there was no tie in sight.

"To what do I owe this honor, Arthur?" he asked, voice lazy and careless. He smirked at Arthur's uncomfortable expression, more than halfway hoping he looked as appealing to the point man as Ariadne had.

"Your cousin."

Eames stilled. There was only one cousin that Arthur knew of, and that was the very cousin that Eames hadn't particularly planned on contacting. Ever. "Oh?" He gave a languid stretch, pleased when Arthur's eyes tracked him closely. "And what has he gotten into?"

"MI5."

Dammit.

"Well, then," Eames drawled. "Mustn't let him twist in the wind unnecessarily. What's the job?"

"Figuring out what MI5 might have extracted from him."

Eames sighed. So much for a vacation.

***

It was easy enough to pick up Ariadne on their way to London. She wasn't exactly terrified of the strange behavior of the children, but the trepidation she felt definitely made her leap forward once Arthur mentioned they would be helping people who could fix the situation. Eames was concerned about the stop, though he didn't voice whatever he was thinking. Arthur could tell by the way the forger drummed his fingers on the armrest of his seat on the plane. Arthur didn't truly want Ariadne involved in anything MI5, but they were short on time and needed someone highly skilled, flexible and available. There really wasn't anyone else to ask.

Eames didn't say a word as Arthur maneuvered them through a panicked London to the safe house that Ianto had told him about. It looked like any other home in Soho, though its security system was far too good and there were escape routes built into the home at every level. Arthur knew for a fact that there was even a hidden sewer entrance. Ariadne took in everything with large eyes, absorbing the details of her surroundings. She didn't ask any questions, possibly picking up on Eames' unspoken tension and the tightly controlled way that Arthur moved. He approved of that, and occasionally gave her reassuring smiles or touches on her arm. He wasn't willing to promise her safety when he didn't know exactly what they were in for. All he could hope was that they would be safe enough going into Ianto's mind since they had his express invitation to do so.

He tapped in the codes that Ianto gave him and the locks turned over without a key. Eames' eyebrows lofted; obviously this whole setup was much more posh than he had expected to see. He went in last, guarding Ariadne without Arthur having to ask. Arthur appreciated the gesture, nodding at him once the door was shut behind them.

"So we're here. Definitely more upscale than the last time we had to deal with him," Eames said. His voice gave nothing away, and he was skilled enough not to have any tells.

"Deal with who?" Ariadne asked, golden eyes flicking between the two men.

There were footsteps to their left. "Deal with me," came a smooth voice with deep Welsh vowels.

Ariadne saw a pale young man with dark hair and eyes with deep shadows beneath them. He was wearing a rumpled suit and appeared as though he had slept in it for a day or two. His hair was somewhat spiky, as if he had run his hands through it several times. He stood there stiffly, though the source of his discomfort didn't seem to be his obvious exhaustion. No, he was staring at Eames as though the forger was someone distasteful.

"Ianto," Arthur said, striding forward. The two shook hands, and Ianto's expression thawed a bit as he looked at Arthur. "We got here as fast as we could."

"You did fantastic," Ianto said with a nod. "The inoculations are supposed to happen today, and I've already put the word out at different estates. The main copy of the video footage that we had was destroyed, but we managed to convince them it wasn't our only copy."

"Was it?" Arthur asked quietly.

Ianto nodded unhappily. "Everything was destroyed, Arthur. And we still don't know what they might have taken from me."

"That's why we're here."

"What are we looking for?" Ariadne asked, brows furrowing. She looked between the three men in front of her. Arthur and Ianto were clearly friends, while the Welshman and Eames had some sort of difficult history. She wasn't sure what was going on, but she could gather it had to do with the current global situation.

Ianto looked to Arthur, who hastily made formal introductions. Something flickered in Ianto's eyes, and it took a moment for Ariadne to place it.

Pity.

"So which agency are you with now?" Arthur asked as Ianto led them further into the house to meet the others.

"Still with Torchwood," Ianto replied. "I managed to get hired on at Torchwood Three."

Arthur gave him a sad smile. "And your hair isn't gray yet. Well done."

"The life expectancy in Cardiff is much lower," he said sadly. His eyes flickered over to Eames, but he didn't say anything. Eames remained blank faced, and Ariadne looked at him in concern but didn't know what to say. She didn't think the forger would appreciate any consoling words from her in any event.

Ianto led the three of them into a large sitting room. A tall dark haired man in trousers, a button down shirt and bracers was standing in front of the fireplace. There were remnants of a meal for three people in the room, but he was the only other occupant. He looked up at the newcomers without any change in expression. "These are the ones, then?"

Arthur lifted his PASIV in answer to the question, and the man nodded. Ianto made introductions and Jack explained that he had sent Gwen upstairs to try to sleep. "She can't go under with us, so at least we'll have someone to watch over the equipment and deliver a kick if we're found."

Eames and Arthur both frowned at Jack; Ariadne simply assumed that he was involved in dream share to know the terms. By their reactions, however, she was starting to gather that it might not be the case. "What's going on?" she asked. No one seemed willing to begin talking, so she crossed her arms over her chest and frowned deeply at all of them. "All right," she began in a brisk tone. "Something was stolen, no one will say what, and I'm expected to be able to build a world for you to go into to find it. If no one says a damn thing, I'm turning around and leaving. I can't start designing a level if I don't know what to base it on."

Jack looked at her, a ghost of a smile on his lips. "Very true. Let's get started, then."

Ianto sat close to Jack. Arthur stayed near Ariadne and Eames made sure he was as far away from Ianto as possible. Jack bypassed his usual "beyond the government" spiel to describe Torchwood. He didn't bother to describe their day to day duties, but focused on the current problem with the 456. "They're a race of aliens that the government is currently trying to bargain with. They were here before, in 1965, and they took a dozen children in exchange for the cure to a virus that was running rampant at the time. It turns out that the children are being used to generate chemicals that are drugs for this species."

"You mean..."

"Yeah. They're getting high off the kids," Jack told her grimly. "The British government is entirely aware of it, and they're planning to hand over ten percent of the children." Ariadne gaped at him in shock and he nodded brusquely. "They're choosing the children in the poorest areas, the ones with the lowest performing schools."

Ariadne didn't miss the way Ianto's jaw tightened fractionally, and guessed that this was personal for him. "So where does the dreaming come in?"

"This isn't where we usually are. This is a safe house, and probably one of the few that no one else knows about." Jack looked over at Ianto, who ran a hand through his hair in an almost agitated manner. "The government bombed the Hub. That's where we usually work," he clarified for Ariadne before she could ask. "It's in Cardiff, and was located over an interdimensional Rift. Our primary purpose had been to monitor that rift, hold or cannibalize whatever technology came through it, contain alien threats and protect the people. Apparently, that function no longer serves the government's purposes."

The bitterness in Jack's voice was unmistakable. "Ianto said something was stolen?"

It was the first thing that Eames had said since their arrival, and Jack merely nodded. "Odds are good that an extraction team from MI5 got to Ianto. Signs are there and it has to be the reason why they haven't killed him even though we know there are kill orders out on all of us."

"If MI5 wanted you dead," Eames said flatly, looking at Ianto directly for the first time, "you'd be dead."

"You would know," Ianto retorted.

Ariadne had the feeling she was watching a tennis match. Arthur cleared his throat and Jack clapped his hands rather like a primary school teacher. "All right, kids," he said briskly. "There are far too many secrets in the Archives and vaults below the Hub. The way it was built, destroying the Hub still would have left those levels intact. Given the goons crawling all over that site like a swarm of ants, we can't check to see what they're going after. There is some seriously heavy duty tech down there, a lot of which the world is not ready for. It'll fuck up the timeline if we let them have it, just as letting the 456 take these kids will ruin everything. They might even be related, I don't know."

"So how do you go back and see what's extracted?" Ariadne asked, looking around the room. As the newcomer to dream share, she had the least knowledge and experience to draw from. Arthur and Eames had been careful to teach her only what she needed to know for the Fischer job. "Can you even do that?"

"It's difficult, and to some extent means recreating the original dream to try to reactivate the memory traces," Arthur said as he nodded. "It obviously involves an active and willing participant, and in theory should not need multiple levels."

"In theory," Ariadne echoed dubiously. She had seen what theory there was in dream share up close and personal, and apparently information was passed around in the community by word of mouth. There were no controlled studies for anything that was theorized, not even in the original military applications. They hadn't needed to know how it worked or why, after all. They had only needed results.

"It's doable," Jack said. His tone implied that he knew it was possible, and all the dreamers in the room looked at him. "What? Human minds are capable of a good many things people don't realize. Ianto has photographic memory. He'll remember once we get him in the right frame of mind for it. They didn't use retcon, after all. And even then, he would need much larger doses than usual to truly eliminate a memory."

"Retcon?" Ariadne asked.

"A medication we use to induce memory loss," Ianto replied in crisp tones. Of course. How else do you get ordinary folk to forget that they've seen aliens or government spies from different dimensions and timelines?

"So what was your dream about?" Ariadne asked, brows furrowing in thought. She was already itching to start sketching something. "What do you remember of it?"

"We were in the Hub and going into the Archives to look for information on the 456. Past that, I'm not entirely sure."

"So we're looking at an extraction and probably a standard dose of retcon, if it was used at all?" Arthur asked.

"Likely they didn't," Jack agreed, nodding.

"The dream would have to look like the Hub, then," Ariadne said. "I'll need to know what it looked like. I assume it'll be all right to build it from memory since the real place is destroyed."

Arthur nodded. "No way to confuse the two."

"We'll need someone to watch. You said Gwen would," Eames said. "Is she reliable? Someone who wouldn't just leave us and run if it goes tits up?"

Ianto and Jack both bristled at his comments, but Jack was able to move past that and see it for the concern that it was. "Yeah. She'll see this through."

That was enough for Eames to calm down a bit. "Anything else we'd need to know before we do this?" he asked, looking between Ianto and Jack. "Any nasty surprises in your heads?"

"In mine? Plenty," Jack said with a cocksure grin. It seemed out of place, as if he was trying to appear more confident than he really was. "Ianto, probably not."

The Welshman in question merely lofted an eyebrow at Jack, then turned to look at the PASIV that Arthur had put on the table. "So when are we going to do this? Time is of the essence."

Ariadne stood. "Then we should go in first, so that I can see the Hub. If time is really that important, then I won't bother to start with sketching things. I'll take a look, then I'll be the dreamer and Ianto will be the subject. That way, I can alter the dream that much more easily as we go down into it."

"That's dangerous," Arthur cautioned her. She nodded, which made him compress his lips unhappily. "It's that much easier to get lost in the dreams, Ariadne. Even with the rest of us with you..." His voice trailed off and Ariadne could only nod again. "There are risks, even without a militarized mind. Too many risks."

"What choice do we have?" Ariadne asked. "If they're on a deadline because of these aliens..."

Arthur opened the case and started pulling out lines. His lips were still pressed tightly together, and he looked up at her intently. "If it gets dangerous in there, if for any reason you don't feel safe, get out."

"It's just to learn the layout of the Hub..."

"Just because there hasn't been any formal militarization, Ianto's no fool and there's too much background tension right now. Just stay safe."

Understanding finally what he was worried about, Ariadne nodded and then sat down on the couch closer to the PASIV. Ianto briskly inserted his own line, but Arthur was gentle with Ariadne's. She barely had time to wonder about the softer touch than usual before she fell under the spell of the PASIV.

"A bit overwrought, don't you think?" Eames drawled once the two were asleep. He sat down heavily near Ariadne and looked between Arthur and Jack. "Unless there's something else you're worried about in Ianto's head?"

"I didn't want to possibly trigger anything," Arthur said slowly. "But it's MI5. I wouldn't put it past them to have installed memory traps in Ianto's head. They left him alive for a reason, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't have covered their tracks or tried to make it difficult for someone else to go in." He glanced at Ariadne. "Maybe just walking around won't trigger anything, but I don't want her taking any unnecessary chances."

Eames looked over at Jack. "So where did your militarization training come from? You don't participate in dream share, yet you know a lot about it."

Jack's smile didn't reach his eyes at all, and Eames got the distinct sensation that his smiles had been all for show. It was a trick he used often enough himself to try to disarm people, as well as make sure that he was underestimated. "I've got a lot of tricks under my sleeve, Eames. You and Arthur stay here and make sure they're all right. I'll go check on Gwen."

Arthur nodded before Eames could reply. "Yeah. We'll be here." He waited until Jack left for upstairs. "Never patched things up with Ianto, did you?"

"That much is obvious," Eames responded in a wry tone. "Whatever made you think that he truly would have wanted my company?"

Arthur sighed and shook his head. "Stubborn, the both of you," he grumbled.

Eames merely grinned at Arthur and leaned back on the couch. He stretched a little and looked between Arthur and Ariadne. "So what is it with you and our dear Ariadne?"

"What are you talking about?"

Tutting playfully, Eames shook a finger at the point man. "You certainly are overly protective of her. Don't say it's the inexperience, because I've seen you with new arrivals before."

Arthur didn't dignify that with a reply, and kept watch on the hum and hiss of the PASIV. He had set it for five minutes, so there wasn't that long to wait.

Upstairs, Jack stuck his head through the open doorway of the room Gwen was in. She was curled up on the bed, eyes closed. Jack was starting to back away when her eyes snapped open and she started pushing herself up to a seated position. "Jack."

"Hey." Jack entered and sat down beside her. The usual platitudes that came to mind were insulting, so he simply put an arm around her shoulders. Gwen leaned into him and buried her face into his chest. Jack simply pressed his lips to the top of her head and rubbed her shoulder a little. He didn't say anything as he held her, and her dark head remained bent in grief.

"They can't get away with it," Gwen said finally, looking up. Her eyes shimmered, but she wasn't crying anymore. If anything, she sounded angry. That was good; he could handle that a lot better than her tears, and she could use her anger. "We have to do something."

"Ianto's friend is here. Brought some others. We're going to figure out what they were looking for in the Hub, see if that has anything to do with the 456 or if it was just a convenient cover for them to do more underhanded shit."

She nodded and let Jack cup her face in his hands. "Killing Rhys was unconscionable. It won't go unpunished, Gwen. I promise you that. We will do whatever it takes to make things right."

"He won't come back."

"No, we can't do that."

"We're bloody Torchwood. We can do all sorts of things..."

"The Hub was destroyed. We can't cheat death."

Her lips quirked up into a pale imitation of her usual gap toothed smile. "You do."

Jack flashed her a wearier version of his charming grin. "I'm a special case."

"You're some kind of case, that's for certain," she said with a lighter tone.

"That's my girl," he murmured, leaning in to kiss her forehead. There had always been a crackle of tension between them, the lingering question of _what if?_ She had an ill-advised affair with Owen out of loneliness and desperation, but never followed through with any of the teasing overtures Jack had sent her way. She chose Rhys, steady, dependable and upright Rhys. Jack had joked on several occasions that he had turned into an unofficial member of the team.

Official or not, Torchwood had claimed another victim long before their due time.

"Come on. We'll head downstairs, maybe have some tea. It won't take too long to figure out what might have been stolen, and you'll need to be alert to watch over us in case we're found out. I don't think anyone's aware of this location, but that doesn't mean much right now. I didn't think anyone would go after Alice either."

Gwen nodded, aware that his daughter and grandson were still imprisoned by MI5. "If they don't release them, we'll take care of it."

"Gwen Cooper, savior of all the innocents," Jack said in a falsely lighthearted tone.

"Someone has to be."

They both looked at each other with sober expressions, then Jack helped Gwen stand. "Let's go see what they wanted from the Hub, shall we?"

***

Ariadne had followed Ianto through his memory of the Hub, careful not to touch anything. She paid careful attention to the things that Ianto seemed to linger on; those would be her anchor points for constructing her dream Hub. He took her though the main areas, then started moving down to some of the lower levels. Ariadne caught a hint of a repeating pattern in the architecture even if Ianto didn't seem aware of it. She filed that away for later as well.

Arthur was visibly relieved when she woke and appeared just fine. Ianto hadn't been particularly chatty while dreaming, and she had learned her lesson from Cobb. Rather than picking at his secrets until she broke him, she was biding her time. It would undoubtedly come out either from him or Eames, and especially if it was something that could possibly harm the rest of them. She knew he would never intentionally do that, which helped soothe her impatient spirit. It surprised her that Eames had hovered close by, concern in his eyes as well. She would have thought that he would head out of the room and stay as far away as possible. He was friendly with her, but she hadn't thought it was too much more than professional courtesy. With Arthur she thought that perhaps there could possibly be more than simple professionalism. With Eames, she wasn't entirely sure what was on his agenda.

"Hey. Do you need a few minutes to get your bearings?" Arthur asked, hands gentle on her arms as he withdrew the needle. She nodded and he helped her up, his touch feeling almost like sparks along her skin.

Eames was at her side instantly as Jack and a brunette came into the room. It was obvious that this had to be Gwen, and that she had been crying for some time. "A pot of tea, perhaps," Eames said, which earned him a wan smile from both women.

He had them both settle down at the kitchen table as he rummaged about in cabinets for a teapot. Jack produced the tea bags, and hovered until Gwen exasperatedly said "I'm all right!" and waved him off in the direction of the sitting room. After that display, Eames kept his mouth shut and did his hovering out of their line of sight, which helped.

"I'm Ariadne," the architect said, introducing herself. She wasn't sure what to say, so settled on "I'm sorry about what happened."

Gwen looked at her, eyes taking on a haunted expression. "They told you, then." Ariadne nodded, and nervously tucked a lock of curling brown hair behind one ear. "Oh."

As Gwen sipped her tea, Ariadne wondered what she could say. She didn't know how to handle grief this fresh. "What was he like?" she asked abruptly. When Gwen looked at her in surprise, Ariadne ducked her head a fraction. "No one's talking about him, or what happened, really. I'm too new at the dream share business, so they focused on that."

Gwen bit her lip and kept her hands tight around the warm mug. Her lips stretched into a sad smile. "He was everything good I had in the world, everything sane, everything that Torchwood isn't. Wasn't," she corrected. She looked down at her mug, bangs falling over her eyes. "We've lost so much, Ariadne. You have no idea."

"So explain it," Ariadne said softly. "Help me understand this better, so I can help find whatever it is they're looking for."

Stuttering a little in the beginning, Gwen told Ariadne about being recruited into Torchwood after stumbling across their staff members in the middle of a case. That she felt so isolated because she couldn't tell her former coworkers anything. She couldn't discuss anything with Rhys, who resented her silence and hated waiting up and wondering if she was going to come home wounded. If she was going to come home at all. The job had consumed her, had given her a sense of purpose that being a PC hadn't. She was going to save people, save the world even, and this was being part of something so much larger than she was.

It left her feeling hollow and empty sometimes. Gwen had often gone through the day feeling as though she couldn't connect with anyone at all, and didn't truly make efforts to get close with Toshiko Sato, who had been the communications expert. She was friendly with Ianto, though she didn't truly feel connected with him either. Jack flirted with everything that moved, so she didn't take him seriously and refused to even indulge in fantasies about giving in to him. As much as she had fallen into a sexual fling with Owen Harper, the medic of the team, she hadn't really attempted to get to know him either.

"I was _needy,"_ Gwen said, rubbing the edge of her mug. "I could have handled it better, but didn't, and told myself I'd make up for it." She looked up with a broken expression. "And now I can't. I can't ever make it better, can't ever try to make it right. I've lost him, and you can't understand how this feels."

"No, I can't," Ariadne murmured. She thought of Dominic Cobb, of his obsessive grief with Mal that had taken the shape of a shade. It was only chance that the Fischer job went off with a good outcome, and could have just as easily ruined them all. It was just as well that Jack said she wasn't allowed to enter the dream with them. Ariadne thought that perhaps Rhys would show up as Gwen's shade.

Gwen pressed a hand to her stomach. "He won't be here, Ariadne. He won't ever know his child, but I'm going to do whatever I can to make sure it knows him."

"I'm sorry," Ariadne said softly. "I don't know what that's like."

"Are you with someone?" Gwen asked. She drank her tea as Ariadne shook her head. "When you do, hang onto it. Hang on tight. You never know when it's going to be gone. You never appreciate what you have until..." Her voice broke, and she bowed her head as she began crying again. "I sent him off yesterday to be _safe,"_ Gwen wailed. "He was supposed to be safe, he wasn't supposed to be hurt..."

Ariadne moved closer to Gwen and Eames detached himself from the wall to come closer to the Welsh woman. "We can't get him back," Eames said in a gentle voice. "But we can get revenge. We can ruin the bastards that took him away, yeah?"

She looked up and nodded, wiping the tears from her eyes. "Yeah. Let's break them to pieces."

Looking at Gwen's fierce face, Ariadne had the distinct impression that she would not want to cross this woman. _Ever._

***

Jack, Ianto, Arthur, Eames and Ariadne arranged themselves around the PASIV, with pillows beneath their heads to make it more comfortable. Because of the sheer size of Torchwood Three, Arthur set the timer for two hours in real time. That gave them twenty four hours to look for the memory traces that MI5 agents tried to erase, which should have been more than enough time to comb through the different levels beneath the bombed out crater in Cardiff. If there was any trouble in the real world, Gwen would tip over Ariadne as the kick, collapsing the dream and signaling to the others that it was time to wake up.

Once Gwen hit the button, they all began to dream.

***  
***


	2. Twisting Hallways

They were standing on a metal catwalk over a large open area. There were several messy desks, one of which had an impressive computer system with multiple screens, readouts and a ticker of some kind. Behind them was a door to an office that would be Jack's, and clearly visible were the medical unit and the hallways leading elsewhere in the Hub. Jack looked around in appreciation, lips curling into a smile. "This is it, all right."

"You're building it all from that one brief glimpse?" Ianto asked, stunned.

"There are tricks to the trade," Ariadne replied with a smile. "Basically, it's capturing the feel of a place more than the actual detail level."

"Interesting," Jack murmured, looking around and then reaching out to touch the wall. "I know it's a dream, but it feels like so much more than that."

"Rather the point of the entire exercise," Arthur replied. He looked over at Ianto. "Where in the Hub were you in the original dream?"

"I remember looking up something at Tosh's workstation," he said, pointing down from the catwalk. Ianto led the way down, and the others followed.

By the time they got to the workstation, a slim woman of Japanese descent was sitting at the workstation, checking the readings. She was in a button down blouse, flared skirt, low heels and her hair clipped up on top of her head. She typed quickly, even though the glyphs on the screen she was facing didn't look remotely like letters.

Jack and Ianto stilled, staring at her in shock. "Tosh?"

The woman turned and smiled warmly at them. "And you brought friends. Good. You haven't gone far enough in, so you haven't seen what they have in store for you."

Ianto eyed her warily. "What are you doing here? You're dead, Tosh."

Tosh gave him a matter of fact look, as if both of them really should have known the anser to that. "Only for a given value of dead, Ianto. This is _Torchwood._ Right now I'm based on your memories, but there are ways around it."

"But..."

"I'm a projection. Most are suppressed, or are in lower levels." She swiveled in her chair to face them. "But as much as you naturally suppress things, you are also aware that MI5 wouldn't have been respectful about what they looked at, not like Ariadne here." Tosh smiled at Ariadne. "You made a wonderful template here. But then, like the real Hub, there are far more secrets here than you all could have guessed."

"Here be monsters?" Eames snarked.

Tosh swiveled to face Eames, her eyes blank and empty sockets. He managed not to recoil at the sight of her. "Yes. There are monsters here. Far too many for comfort, and such darkness…"

"But then, you always knew that," Ianto said in his usual mild tones.

"Play nice," Tosh admonished them. "Whatever happened, the past is the past. It can't be undone, even if the Hub was up and running. There are other things, however..." She eyed Ianto and smiled warmly. "Even you couldn't get through the entirety of the Archives." Tosh ran a hand over one of the computer terminals at her workstation and it almost seemed to purr like a cat. "I had Mainframe, you know that much. But there are things in Mainframe that are too fantastic to believe, even for Torchwood."

"You were here when I was," Ariadne began slowly. "But I didn't see you. I didn't know you were there, and I was looking at everything."

Tosh simply gave her a brilliant smile. "Yes. And I was here when the two MI5 agents came in with Ianto." She stood and pointed to a door none of them had noticed before. "I can guide you through if you like. They laid traps, of course. They're counting on curiosity for whoever you're able to convince to help you. My guess is, they don't know that you know actual players in the dream share community."

Arthur and Eames exchanged a glance as Tosh turned to take in the door. "Or you can take your chances when you go in. But that door isn't the way to go. I'm telling you now, _do not open it._ There are things in here best left undisturbed." Tosh turned around, those hollow and haunted eyes seeming to even disturb Ianto now. "Trust me. Leave them be, for all our sakes. They opened doors they shouldn't have and unlocked more than they bargained for." She looked at Ianto directly. "They left without everything they came for. One of the two implied that much, at least. You'll have to be careful, since they want to come back."

"We'll have to prevent any opportunity to get at you," Jack promised, resting a hand on Ianto's shoulder possessively.

"We can try to militarize you, but our priority tonight is track down whatever they _did_ take from you." Arthur looked to Tosh. "You saw them, so you can point the way. The faster we get this over with, the faster we can train Ianto."

Tosh's lips quirked into a soft smile. "You don't have to militarize Ianto. I told you, they disturbed things they really shouldn't have. There are memories Ianto doesn't know that he still has, buried deeply and covered with a near overdose of retcon. Those memories shredded those agents faster than they could cope with. It was frightening, but did the job. I wasn't seen, so I'm still here, guarding Mainframe."

Ianto reached out and touched Tosh's arm gently. "I miss you, Tosh."

Her smile was sweet and shy at once, and Ariadne thought that perhaps she might have liked Tosh in life. "It's strange, knowing I'm your projection. The others don't. They think they're real, that this place is real. They don't realize they're defending your memory palace."

"Oh. Well." Ianto looked almost embarrassed as the others stared at him. "That makes sense."

Tosh took a large ring of keys from her desk and set the Rift monitors to autopilot mode. "Once we cross through into the lower levels, keep to the path."

"Like a fairy tale," Ariadne blurted. "Stray from the path at your peril."

"Exactly." Tosh grinned beatifically at Ariadne. "Think of me as the ball of thread to lead you through the maze."

They followed the projection into the Hub, heading for the lower levels and the Archive.

***

Gwen knelt on the floor next to Jack and Ianto. She stroked their faces gently, eyes watering slightly. They were all she had left. Well, and the baby. The three of them had to band together tightly, had to fight against whatever MI5 had planned. It wasn't good from what she gathered, and it was only a matter of hours before clinics opened and the "inoculations" were scheduled to begin. The lowest performing ten percent of children would be rounded up and given away like so much trash, so much unwanted filth.

Hand resting over her stomach, she felt a fierce wave of protectiveness wash over her. That little creature inside of her had a heartbeat. Those children on the estates did, too. Maybe they weren't the rich political contributors, but they still mattered. They were children, potentially amazing people, and the government couldn't simply give them away like candy.

The faintest bit of stubble on Ianto's jaw rasped at her palm. Gwen closed her eyes, remembering the feel of Rhys beneath her hands suddenly. She had to yank her hand away, though that led to her hand crashing into Jack's shoulder. That wasn't any better, and she had to fold her hands onto her lap. She would protect them and the children. She had to.

Pressing a soft kiss to their foreheads, she settled in to wait.

***

The first part of the descent seemed to go easily. Ianto had brought Ariadne into this part of the Hub, and the other hallways that splintered off from the main one stretched out into darkness. One contained the weevil cells, and there was the sound of rustling and whining. "You had to have weevil projections?" Jack teased, his arm bumping playfully against Ianto's.

"Accuracy is everything, Jack," Ianto told him in his usual deadpan tones.

"I still can't get over the detail," Jack murmured, though he managed not to touch the walls.

Ariadne smiled as she heard the soft comment, and caught up with Tosh. She might have been a projection, but even projections held information worth knowing. "So you were the information specialist, I gather."

Tosh laughed. "Well, computers and information processing are definitely my specialty, but anything mechanical, really. And languages. I created several algorhythms to try to decode and translate the artifacts that fall through the Rift."

"What's it like, then?"

"Working here?" Tosh gave her a sly smile. "You do realize I'm not the real Tosh, right? The real one died on the floor of the medical bay upstairs. She bled out of a gut wound and still managed to save the rest of the team. And she had recorded a going away message of sorts, programmed to play if her death was ever logged into Mainframe's records." The Japanese woman laced her fingers together primly. "What you'll get if I answer that question is filtered through Ianto's perception of her. And as friendly as they were, it may not be what she actually felt."

"You're the closest thing here to what it was like," Ariadne reasoned.

"Oh, no," Tosh disagreed. She opened the door to another stairwell. "You could ask her yourself, if you like. She died, but there is tech here that could bring her back. Her body is in the morgue, frozen in the exact way she died. It's easy enough to repair the damage, reinfuse her with blood products, get the heart pumping again."

"That's rather like Frankenstein's monster," Arthur piped up behind them. Jack and Ianto's whispering had stopped abruptly once Tosh had started talking. Eames looked appalled by her words, but not terribly surprised.

"But she wouldn't turn on her makers. Well," Tosh added with that ironic twist to her lips. "Ianto doesn't think she would. Who knows, really?"

"She wouldn't ever harm us," Jack said with absolute certainty. "That wasn't the kind of woman she was. We all know that."

Tosh pouted playfully at him. "You do spoil all the fun, Jack. This is how she never was in reality, but how she could have been." She stopped walking, pausing on the landing of the stairwell. No one seemed to notice that she had two distinct shadows as she stood beneath the overhead light, and only one was shaped like her. "Briefly, she was. Briefly, but it's all forgotten now. That version of her was wiped out for everyone's safety. The MI5 men unlocked that aspect when they came through here." Tosh looked up at Ianto with her odd shadowed eyes, lips flattening down into the usual hesitant expression that Ianto remembered. "We were all different then, but it's dangerous. It's not the behavior, really. It's the _idea."_

"Ideas are the world's most resilient parasites," Arthur murmured, echoing what Dominic Cobb had often said.

"Yes, they are," Tosh agreed. "Some are much more dangerous than others."

She led them through a door even Ariadne hadn't seen before. "This isn't part of the Hub," Ianto protested. Through the door was a deep, visceral darkness, and Ariadne paused at the threshold. The Welshman reached out to Tosh, but she lifted a torch that hadn't been there a moment ago. "This wasn't here before," Ianto insisted.

Tosh gave Ariadne a hard shove, sending her forward into the darkness. Arthur rushed at Tosh, crying out in dismay and anger. Eames dove forward into the darkness, intent on retrieving Ariadne. Tosh laughingly spun away from the angry men, skittering across steps that yawned wide and suddenly seemed impossible to cross. "Sometimes," she began in a soft voice that didn't sound like her own, "all you need is a little _push."_

Her face for an instant didn't seem like hers, seemed more like that of a Caucasian man with dark hair and expressive eyes, as if he could force his way into their memories.

But then the stairs tipped, sending her sprawling. Arthur pounced on her as the second shadow detached from her form without anyone noticing. Ianto and Jack were both required to pull him off of her. Even so, he fought them with the strength of a man possessed. "I swear to God," Arthur snarled, his fingers closing around her throat with particular vicious efficiency, "if anything happens to her, I will personally destroy you and everything about you."

Ianto had to pull Arthur's Glock and press it against his temple. "Let go, Arthur. Ariadne is fine. If she wasn't, the dream would be collapsing right now."

The logic sank in after a moment and he breathed a bit easier. "All right. All right." He looked around and saw the open door, the yawning darkness. A shadow flitted across the landing above them, and the Tosh on the floor was the usual reserved woman that Ianto remembered. Arthur shook his head. "Eames and Ariadne are in there. Why aren't they coming out?"

Jack helped Tosh to her feet and examined her neck. Bruises were already blossoming against the pale skin of her throat. "Because that's not part of the Hub," Tosh said, her voice rough after the near strangulation. "I can't talk about that," she rasped, pointing up to where Arthur had seen the fleeting shadow. "If I name it, Ianto might remember it. He _can't._ It's too dangerous. I kept trying to get that through."

"Oh, that got through all right," Arthur muttered, approaching the open doorway. He looked back toward Tosh, caught in Jack's arms. She looked rather like a butterfly pinned to matting, and he was suddenly sorry he had attacked her. "Why are they in there?"

"The thing feeds on memories, alters them, reproduces through them." Tosh gave him a pained glance. "The MI5 agents unlocked it, and they were the first to suffer. It might not get far, but there's no telling what they might do. They didn't get what they came for. I did follow them as far as they did go."

The shadow shifted above them, and Arthur suddenly thought that perhaps the dark held teeth and claws. A shiver ran down his spine and he looked at Jack and Ianto. "I need to go after them. I can't leave them."

"You do what you need to do," Ianto said with a brisk nod. He returned Arthur's Glock and watched his friend return the weapon to his holster. "They matter to you, don't they?"

Arthur looked at Ianto incredulously. "Of course they do, Ianto. They're the best at what they do in the business."

Ianto shook his head. "You always were rather obtuse about emotions, Arthur."

"I could say the same for you, Ianto. You and your cousin, actually. Neither of you reconciled after he left the military..."

"He got what he wanted, and that's all that matters," Ianto told him shortly.

"You grew up together," Arthur protested.

"And he's so very English now, isn't he? So eager to forget the poor Welsh cousins and pretend we never existed. Reconciliation works both ways, Arthur." Ianto rocked on his heels slightly, his expression turned bitter. "This is what he wanted. Who am I to change that?"

Arthur made a displeased noise but headed for the doorway into darkness. "He's alone, Ianto. He'll never admit it, but I think the bastard regrets what happened."

"It would be better coming from him," Ianto replied with a falsely cheerful tone. "Careful who you apologize for, Arthur," Ianto told him. "One would think you cared for him just as much as you do about Ariadne."

Arthur frowned at Ianto. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Jack positioned himself between the two suited men. "We're wasting time. I haven't kept track of how much time we've spent down here."

"Two hours," Tosh supplied helpfully.

"That leaves twenty-two left to figure out what the hell MI5 wanted and why they had to kill us all to get it. You can argue about the niceties of relationships and emotions later, all right?"

"If there is one," Ianto said darkly.

"There _will_ be a later." Jack looked between the two men. "I promise."

Arthur nodded. "I'll try to find Ariadne and Eames and get back to you and help."

Once he disappeared through the door into the darkness, it vanished. Jack and Ianto exchanged a look as Tosh twisted her fingers nervously together. "That can't be good," Jack muttered. He turned and looked at Tosh in concern. "And a self-aware projection..."

"I'm the only one," she murmured, shaking her head. "I don't know why I'm different. I can only assume it's because of what happened, the thing I won't discuss. I think I was bound up with it somehow, so letting the thing loose gave me a sort of conscious state."

"Or we could just blame Torchwood like everyone else does," Jack said with a shrug. Ianto didn't crack a smile as Jack hoped he would. "I'm sure they will soon enough," he added, looking at the spot the door used to be.

"We've got our own trouble," Tosh said, looking at the two of them. "They're professionals. They should be okay... right?"

Ianto looked at the wall where the doorway had been. He had known Arthur for a long time, and Eames since childhood. Both were strong and willful men, creative and able to hold their own against impossible odds. While he didn't know Ariadne, he had the feeling she was just as strong as they were.

"Yes," he said with absolute certainty. "They'll find their way."

The three of them continued down another five flights of stairs.

***

Eames dreamed up a torch and held it in his left hand, holding it crosswise over his USP Compact. There was no indication of danger yet, but he was sure it was only a matter of time before _something_ happened. "Ariadne!"

There was the sound of water dripping and heavy breathing. He shone the light in that direction and saw a shadowy outline approaching Ariadne's crumpled form. Though it was just a shape suggestive of a human, it was only a dark matte black shape with overlong fingers reaching for her. Eames didn't think twice about shooting it. The creature let out an inhuman wail of pain and fled into the darkness.

Rushing to Ariadne's side, he felt for a pulse. It was strong and steady, her breathing deep and even. He settled into place next to her and decided to imagine large klieg lights around them. He didn't plan on getting blindsided by whatever darkness that lived in Ianto's mind.

It wasn't too long before she stirred, though Eames had no way of marking time. His watch had stopped, and every dreamed clock refused to run.

Ariadne threw herself at him in relief, burying her face in the crook of his neck. She let out a sound almost like a sob, though there were no tears against his skin. Eames held her close, breathing in her scent deeply. "You're all right, then? The creature didn't get you?"

"Creature?" she echoed weakly, pulling back to look at him in concern. She shuddered at his description of the shadow, what little of it he had seen. "No, it was nothing like that. When she pushed me in here, I couldn't see where I was going and couldn't get anything into my hands before I crashed into a wall or something. And then you were here." She looked around, arms still around him. "Is Arthur still here?"

Eames shook his head. "I suspect he won't be long in following you, darling. He was attacking the projection when I went in after you."

Ariadne frowned at him. "What are you talking about?"

"You don't see the way he looks at you?" She merely blinked at him, making him laugh. "Oh, the both of you are just priceless."

"But after the Fischer job, he never... I didn't say..." She broke off, flustered, and ducked her head slightly. "It doesn't matter now."

Eames let his forehead touch her head and heaved a sigh. "Of course it does, Ariadne. What do you think keeps the community together? There are loose networks of contacts, of people you'd work with because they're the best but you can't stand them, of the ones you would be willing to drop just about anything for." He smiled into her hair and stroked her back soothingly. "He would drop anything for you, you have to know that. Yes, there was a time consideration for this particular job, but I have the suspicion he would have found a way to your doorstep sooner or later. Arthur has few enough friends."

"Is that the future I'm looking at, then? Being on the run and not having any friends?" She didn't move her head to look at him, and let her eyes slide shut.

"I'd say you had at least the lot of us. True, Yusuf would only come to your defense if you were stationed in Mombasa, but he's a sly one. He knows far too many unsavory characters."

Ariadne chuckled. "And you're one, of course."

"One of the most unsavory," he told her in a deadpan tone. He continued stroking her back; it was just as soothing a gesture for him as it was for her. She was tiny in his arms, which was logical but still surprising. It made him want to protect her, even if he knew she had a formidable strength of will. There was no coming back from limbo unscathed otherwise.

Then again, it hadn't been _her_ limbo. That likely made all the difference.

"I'm scared, Eames," she murmured, fingers tightening on his shirt.

"So you do frighten after all," he joked, earning himself a soft bark of laughter. "It's all right to be frightened, Ariadne. Fear is a natural response to the unknown. Instincts are there for a reason, and you should listen to them."

She turned up her face, intending to kiss his cheek. She brushed her lips against his instead, and froze slightly at the contact. "Um..."

Eames gave her a lazy smile, still stroking her back. "Those instincts are a delight."

Glad that he didn't seem offended by the accidental gesture, Ariadne gave him a shy smile. "I was aiming for your cheek."

"You wound me. And here I thought my masculinity was overpowering your sense of fear."

That made her laugh, an amused and thrilled sound that made him smile in return. "I'm glad I'm not alone in here." Her smile faltered slightly. "I didn't make this place, Eames. The door shouldn't have been there at all. I had given Ianto's mind room to improvise, but that was based on the template of the Hub that was in his memory. He shouldn't be able to attach whole new areas to my basic design. _That's_ why I'm scared. What else is going to happen that we didn't intend in here?"

Eames moved to cup her face in his hands. "My cousin is an odd one, but he means us no harm. I think that shadowy creature is the thing that MI5 unlocked that Tosh had been talking about. If she shoved you in this place, I suspect that she was infected by it somehow." He thought of those overlong fingers, the way it had been reaching out to Ariadne when he had shot it. "I suspect it's transferred by touch. So we'd best be careful."

"What happened between the two of you?" she asked, startled to find out that they were related. They looked nothing alike, and the only thing they seemed to share was animosity.

Sighing, he shook his head and let go of her face. "It's a long and unpleasant story, and not one I wish to tell. Let's just say that I got into trouble and needed his help. It didn't go over as well as either of us had thought it would."

"Cousins?" she asked, looking at him with a critical eye.

He merely smiled. "Second cousins, really. My mum and his, both English. His mum died fairly early, so he and Rhiannon just had his father. He wasn't... My father hadn't been in the picture for a long time by then. So my mum moved us to Wales to help out." He let out a breath. "It wasn't a particularly pleasant experience for any of us, I think. His father was not a good man, Ariadne. He was a drunk and got violent, and we all had to cover up for him. I couldn't wait to leave, and I don't think Ianto ever forgave me for getting out and never looking back."

"But he helped you when you needed it," Ariadne pointed out. She laid her hand on his chest, and he smiled faintly as he closed one of his larger hands over hers. "You're family."

Eames gave her a sad smile. "Sometimes the worst things happen because of family." He leaned forward and kissed her forehead tenderly. Whatever his tangled feelings toward Ianto, he didn't want her worrying after them. "It will be all right, Ariadne. We're all adults here."

She nodded, then looked around them into the encroaching darkness. "And this place..."

"Is not one I wish to stay in very long."

Ariadne visibly braced herself and pushed away whatever questions she might have had about the Jones family dynamics. It was fascinating to watch. "I didn't make it, so I couldn't tell you the layout or what to expect. There might be traps here, but it'll be impossible to predict where or how they'll come since there doesn't seem to be a maze here. Usually I can feel the edges and the substance of the dreams I make. I can try to change things about it..."

"Not until we know what we're dealing with, in case that might bring on infection."

Biting her lip nervously, Ariadne nodded. "I don't always touch things when I create."

"Better to be safe than sorry," Eames told her, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. "We can't lose you here." He brushed his fingers against the sensitive skin behind her ear, watching her breath catch and her eyes widen ever so slightly. So it wasn't just Arthur that could hold her interest, then. Interesting.

"Eames," she whispered, licking her lips nervously.

He pressed a finger over her lips. They were soft, and he wanted much more than the accidental kiss she had given him. "Arthur will be here soon."

"You're very certain of that."

"He will never be far away from you, darling. It's like the moon and the sun." Eames let his finger fall from her lips to rest on her collarbone. "You don't see the way he looks at you. Just like he doesn't see the way you look at him."

It was a completely bald faced guess, but Ariadne's response told him it was truth on her part. Even so, he took a chance and continued: "Just like you don't see the way I look at you."

She gasped in surprise, lips parting enticingly. She really had no idea how delectable she seemed to him, how much he wanted to get to know her outside of the job. Eames so very rarely cared for or about the people he worked with, but he found Ariadne fascinating.

Whatever Ariadne would have said was drowned by the sound of a door slamming shut, and the click of dress heels on tile. Arthur.

Eames turned and lifted his torch so that Arthur could follow the beam of light. They hadn't gotten too far from the doorway, so he found them easily. He instantly went to Ariadne's side to check for himself that she was physically fine. After hearing Eames' words only moments before, Ariadne watched Arthur intently. She was putty under his hands, but his own intensity was more than what he used on jobs.

Tucking that away for later, Ariadne grasped Arthur's arm and leaned into him. His body molded itself around hers, as if he could protect her from the encroaching dark. Ariadne saw Eames give her a pointed "I told you so" look, which was also tinged in sadness. _You don't see the way I look at you._

She saw it now, though she didn't know what to do about it.

"There's no way out of here, is there?" Eames asked, turning to shine his light in the direction Arthur had come from. There was no sign of a door at all. "So we're locked in with that creature. We'll have to be careful as we find a way out."

"Creature?" Arthur asked, brows furrowing as he pulled slightly away from Ariadne to look at Eames. He frowned deeply at Eames' description of the thing that nearly attacked Ariadne, then he looked back toward the missing door. Now there wasn't even a wall behind him. "I saw a shadow above us, moving. Tosh implied that it was the thing MI5 dislodged from Ianto's memories, and that it had taken over her. It didn't run past me out of the door while I was talking with the others, so there has to be another way out of this place."

"Good to know."

"I can try to change some of the details about this part of the dream," Ariadne began.

"We can't lose you if that thing infects you. We don't know what it does, but it can't be good if the projection was so bloody afraid of it," Eames told her.

Arthur was absently stroking her back and holding onto her arm tightly. Ariadne placed one of her hands on his chest, over his heart. She reached out to Eames with the other, and he grasped it without thinking. Arthur only then noticed what he was doing, though he didn't say anything. His chagrined expression said everything for him.

"We need to stick together, then," Ariadne murmured, looking up at him. "At least until we know if it's safe for me to rip this place apart. Right?"

"Sounds reasonable. We need to know more about why this place is even here." Arthur's mind was already trying to catalogue what he knew of this place, of Ianto and whatever he could guess about the secrets hiding in Ianto's mind. Ianto would never knowingly hurt any of them. This dark memory creature, on the other hand...

Eames clapped his other hand onto Arthur's shoulder. "Good thing you're point, then. I'd think the first thing to try to do is get more light. We're too vulnerable in the dark."

Ariadne actually smiled after a moment, and the two men realized that there was a soft halo of light around them. It was a rough sphere extending out almost fifty feet in all directions, its source a small glowing ball centered roughly over Ariadne's head. She practically twinkled at Arthur's confused look. "If I can't change the surroundings, I can change myself to include a light feature, right?"

Eames laughed. "Oh yes. I have high hopes for getting out of here unscathed."

They picked a direction and began to walk.

***

Jack, Ianto and Tosh continued their descent. Jack was itching to ask about the memory creature, but knew that talking about it might draw it closer to them. Ianto might get the full infection, and it could spread to Jack and the others. While that would be bad for Jack, it could be lethal to the others. Even if it wasn't, as parasites that killed their host tended to die as well, having something like this would devastate a career in dream share.

Dammit. They were all so goddamn fucking young.

"Why did you mention that we could bring you back?" Ianto asked.

"Just because the real Tosh was resigned to it doesn't mean she wanted to die."

"Resurrecting team members hasn't worked well," Jack told her, thinking of Susie and Owen. _You don't understand what it's like,_ Susie had said when they brought her back from the dead to interrogate her. _There's something hungry waiting in the dark._

"No, it hadn't. But we were using tech we didn't fully understand," Tosh began. It was rather surreal for Jack, as he knew he was debating the topic with a projection. She was still a facet of Ianto's personality, still a function of his memory. "There's more in the Archives and vaults. If researched and applied properly, she could come back, the same as you."

There was something about the way she said that, the way there was an almost accusatory look in her eyes that made Ianto pause. "That's what they were looking for, wasn't it?" Ianto asked, staring at her. There was no outward sign of it, but there was a growing dread in his stomach and a rising anger that he would be used this way. "Tosh wouldn't ever force the issue this way. It wasn't fair, but she knew that life wasn't fair. She told me she had risked everything to save her mother, and that it worked but she was never allowed to see her again. Tosh _knew_ that sometimes you had to make sacrifices." Ianto looked at Jack, who stared back at him with an almost placid expression. "That's what MI5 was after, wasn't it?"

Tosh nodded even as she said "I can't say."

Projection logic at its finest. She was trying to help even as there were gaps in her knowledge.

"That tech is not how it happened to me," Jack said quietly. "And I wouldn't wish this kind of immortality on anyone. Imagine never being allowed to rest once you die. You keep dying, but you keep coming back. You keep living, even if you don't want to. You watch everyone around you, everyone you care about and love, die. Everyone dies. No one remains but you, alone for the rest of eternity."

Ianto grasped Jack's hand and pulled him in for a tender kiss. "Jack."

"I've lived a long time, Ianto," he murmured. He cradled Ianto's face in his hands, a ghost of a smile gracing his lips. "Sometimes it's wonderful. Sometimes it's torture. Those bastards at MI5 have no idea what they're in for if they actually try to do it."

"They didn't find what they're looking for," Ianto reminded him.

"And not to sound odder than this already will," Tosh began hesitantly, "but bringing me back might give you more of an advantage. I'd be able to hack into their computer system without them knowing and find out exactly what they have, take it out without their realizing it..."

"There would have been hypoxic damage," Jack protested.

Tosh nodded. "Possibly. But I was in the Hub when I died." She gave them a sad smile, and reached out to touch Jack's arm. "You put me into a cryo chamber fairly quickly. It might be possible. I'm not saying definitely. There's no way to tell how much damage there is. But I'm dead already, Jack. It can't hurt to try, and I'd rather try to help you both than lie frozen on a slab." Her smile was bittersweet. "You finding me was the best thing that ever happened to me. I had friends here, I was able to see such amazing things, write code that saved your lives and really make a difference. I still want to help."

Jack turned to Ianto. "This is your projection of her. This isn't real."

"It's how I see her," Ianto said softly. "She'd make this argument, you know that."

Jack sighed and grasped the back of Ianto's neck, keeping him from moving away. "Moot point until we get out of here."

"Just think about it," Tosh told them, opening the door to a storage floor. The hallway was brilliantly lit, and there were five doors spaced out on either side of it. "They went into this one, but I couldn't follow from here." Her voice dropped into a hushed whisper. "They let it loose, and it trapped them on this floor."

"How do you know it's safe to go in there now, then?"

Tosh looked up though the stairwell. Jack and Ianto followed her line of sight, and there was no flickering shadow the way there had been when Ariadne had been pushed into the dark. "He's found better prey than us."

***

At first the three dreamers seemed to be a large open expanse without walls or ceiling. As they walked, however, they approached a large archway leading into a cathedral-like space. Eames looked around in awe. "This is Cardiff Cathedral. I remember this place..." His voice trailed off as he looked around. "We weren't Catholic, of course, but sometimes it was soothing to listen to the choir practicing." He looked back at Ariadne with a sad smile. "Rhiannon always thought we'd get into trouble, but we never did."

"Rhiannon?" Arthur asked with a frown.

"Ianto's sister," Eames said, shrugging. "I lost track of her when I left the first time."

"So if this place is where that creature was hiding," Ariadne began, looking around the cathedral walls, "Isn't it safe to assume that all of Ianto's bad memories might be here?"

"Maybe. It would be more accurate to assume that whatever memories that thing tainted are in here," Arthur told her.

"And what better way to get brought back than to hide inside a soothing one?" Eames asked, nearly reaching out to touch the stones of the wall. "It's impeccable, of course. But Ianto always did have a good memory."

"This is different from memory," Arthur reminded him sharply.

Eames snatched his hand away from the wall. "Yes, of course," he said with a nod. He seemed to shake himself out of the childhood memory and looked over at the other two. "I wouldn't be surprised if we wind up in Cardiff out there," he said, nodding toward the cathedral doors.

"So we're going through a mirror of the map I built in my head for Ianto?" Ariadne asked, frowning a little as she tried to figure out what this might mean for the others.

"Yes, and no," Arthur said. "You built just the Hub, right?" He waited for her nod. "This would be outside of the Hub. This would be the part that you didn't have to build, but was waiting because of Ianto's memories of the real place."

"Doesn't that mean that we can find our way back into the actual Hub, then? Rejoin Jack and Ianto and help him?"

Eames had wandered a little way down the center aisle as they spoke. He could see the front doors of the cathedral. Once he turned around toward the other two, he could see that the archway into the darkness was gone. In its place was the seamless cathedral wall, right where it should be. "It depends on what his memories do," Eames said, unable to rip his eyes away from the blank wall. He told himself it was because some kind of memory monster was in Ianto's head that this was happening. Or perhaps because Ariadne didn't have control over the entire dream anymore. "We might walk out into modern day Cardiff with the blasted rubble. We might wind up months ago when the Hub was hidden and active. Or years ago, before any of us had ever heard of Torchwood."

Ariadne nodded, because it made sense. She strode forward, past Eames and toward the front doors to the cathedral. "Only one way to find out."

Arthur followed closely on her heels, concern in the line of his jaw and the way his eyes flicked everywhere. Eames rather thought that this entire situation had to be driving him up the wall. If he didn't have a personal stake in this, he might have enjoyed the sight. Arthur was so very rarely rattled, after all.

Cardiff Metropolitan Cathedral of St. David was about one and a half miles to Roald Dahl Plass, which was the landmark above part of the Hub that made up Torchwood Three. Arthur led the way, shoes striking the pavement sharply. Eames took up position partly behind Ariadne, much as they had in London when going to the safe house in Soho. His and Ariadne's boots made much duller, softer sounds on the pavement. He looked about, almost startled to see ordinary projections milling about aimlessly as if they truly were in Cardiff. If he hadn't known how they had arrived at this point, he would have thought that _this_ was the map that Ariadne had created.

"Have you been to Cardiff before?" he asked her, and let his surprise show when she shook her head. "This is exactly how I remember it."

Ariadne gave him a level look. "That might be where it came from."

"What are you talking about?" he asked. "I'm not the dreamer or the subject. I shouldn't be influencing this space at all."

"It's how I set up my dream," she murmured, and quickened her pace to keep up with Arthur as he passed Wesley Lane. "I had the basic map planned, just a few anchor details. Nothing more elaborate than the framework, the feeling of the place." She turned her head slightly and caught Eames' eye. "I never built the map for _me_ to fill it, and without Ianto here, someone else had to fill the dream by default."

"So does that mean wherever he and Jack are, their part of the dream fell apart?"

Ariadne shook her head. "Not likely. He's still the subject of the dream, but now he has to do the searching on his own. I can't help him or create shortcuts now. He has to search the Hub as if it was real, while we have to try to find a way around to where he is." She pursed her lips and kept pace with Arthur. The point man looked anxious, no doubt because their already tenuous plan was falling apart around them. That was the nature of favors, though. He couldn't plan ahead to his liking, and emotions were hanging open on his sleeve. "Think of this as parallel dreams. Ianto is keeping his part anchored. This is my half of the dream, but I don't have any details to fill in the anchor points. So you're probably the one doing it for me."

"Or me," Arthur said in clipped tones. "I've been here recently, too." He risked a glance back at them, though the two were only two or three steps behind him as he approached Bridge Street. "I was even in that cathedral."

"Whatever for? There's nothing worth anything in Cardiff," Eames asked.

Arthur shook his head. "Not my place to say."

Eames looked at Arthur askance. "What? There haven't _ever_ been jobs in this area."

"You do realize I do more than just dream share activity, right?" he asked in arch tones. At Eames' incredulous look, Arthur shrugged. "When Dom couldn't build and he wasn't that comfortable with extraction, someone had to pay the bills."

"I still don't understand why you continued working with him. I didn't realize how bad it was until the Fischer job, but the man was utterly mental. You do know that, yes?"

Arthur shot Ariadne a wry look. "So I've been told."

Ariadne smiled at him. "There had to have been something to inspire that kind of loyalty," she told him. He obviously appreciated the mediation attempt, and returned her smile. "The upshot of all this," she continued, cutting off Eames neatly, "is that either of you could be fueling this part of the dream, then."

"Yes," Arthur told her simply.

She shook her head at them. "You both have far too many secrets."

"Nature of the business," Arthur replied as Eames gave her an unrepentant grin.

They continued in silence as David Street turned and then angled toward Mary Ann Street. Though there were bus stops along the way, none of the buses seemed to be running. There were cars parked, but the streets were much less busy than that actual one would have been. It was odd, considering the fact that they were right next to the Cardiff International Arena. There should have been plenty of cars and projections moving in and out. "It's rather sedate around here. Is it usually?" Ariadne asked.

"It wasn't when I was here last," Arthur remarked. "But if there are parallel dreams running, we'd only have half of the available projections."

"What are we going to do if there's no Hub?" she asked, looking between the two men. They didn't have any backup plan, and staying in this dream until the clock ran out didn't appeal. There were approximately twenty-two hours left. A lot could happen in that time, and she would rather not wake up infected with some kind of memory fiend.

"We'll figure something out," Arthur said, left hand closing into a fist at his side. His steps were a bit brisker as he continued down Mary Ann Street. He intended to lead them down Bute Street; it was a long walk, and going along A470 normally involved a bit more traffic. It still led down to Roald Dahl Plass and the Wales Millennium Centre. Ariadne looked at everything as they walked, fascinated with the way it looked. It did look like the real thing, even if he knew that this was nothing like Cardiff.

"It isn't like you not to have a dozen back up plans," Eames remarked to Arthur.

"Fuck you," Arthur replied in even tones, not looking his way. "There's no way to predict something like this. You know that."

Eames lapsed into silence. It wasn't as much fun needling Arthur about this. He was caught in the same trap, and he couldn't simply shoot himself awake and leave them behind. He was rather attached to the two of them, and couldn't run away from this particular job. It was one thing to be lied to and then expected to lay down his mind for a stranger. It was another to be asked to help family, especially when he owed said family member innumerable favors.

He wanted to make some kind of pithy statement to assure the others it would be all right. He wanted to promise that he would protect them, that nothing dangerous in Ianto's mind would harm them if he could help it. But that would be revealing far too much when he had gotten too little in return. Eames kept his mouth shut and his steps in rhythm with Arthur's. He had his weapons at the ready, just in case.

But there were no difficulties in reaching the Plass. The projections looked like ordinary ones, there was light foot and auto traffic, the sky overhead was clear and sunny. The Plass itself was beautiful, and there were tourists milling about the Millennium Centre and admiring the location. Not too far away was Mermaid Quay and the water of the bay. Ariadne was positively grinning at the sight, drinking it all in despite her aching feet. "I have to visit this place in the real world," she told them, nearly bouncing on the balls of her feet like a child.

"It's different," Arthur reminded her gently.

"There's a blasted crater here," Eames said, looking around sadly. "Telly said it was a terrorist attack. More tolerable than saying MI5 did it themselves."

The grin slid from Ariadne's face, and Arthur followed his impulse to grasp her hand in his. She tightened her grip and looked at him gratefully, leaning toward him slightly. He blinked, not expecting how responsive she would be.

Then he thought of the kiss they had during the Fischer job, and the way she kept trying to spend time with him during the six days they waited out the first layer of the dream. Arthur had to suppress a sigh at the missed opportunity.

"Come on," Eames said, turning away from the two of them with a frown. Arthur flicked a glance at him, surprised. "We need to find a way into the Hub if we can."

"Do you know the way in?" Arthur asked him.

Eames shook his head and arched an eyebrow as he looked back at Arthur. "I rather thought that you would."

"Well, this is Ianto's mind," Ariadne murmured, looking around. "Let's find a local."

She took off toward the Quay, away from the obvious tourists and their cameras. Anyone not gawking at the Centre or seeming impressed by the Plass was avoided. Ariadne smiled invitingly at a bored projection. "Hello. I'm wondering... Have you heard of Torchwood?"

The projection snorted. "Bloody Torchwood," she replied, rolling her eyes and snapping her chewing gum. She looked perhaps twenty at most. "Everyone knows even if they won't say. Open secret, it is."

"I was wondering if you knew how to find them?"

"Ha, that one," the projection replied. "Anything odd, there you are. They do order pizza a lot, I hear that much. Some poor delivery girl never returned home thanks to them."

"Thanks. I'll check that out."

Arthur gave her a smile, and Eames merely laughed. "So let's find the likely delivery place."

For a secret organization, they weren't terribly secret. It might have been just the projections, but the three of them had the feeling that some local businesses turned a blind eye to the odd behavior in order to keep up business. They were directed to the tourist office at the Quay, and they stopped short at the sight of Ianto behind the counter.

Ianto merely smiled at them. "You're lost, then."

"Well, yeah. We're trying to get back to the other half of the dream."

The projection of Ianto merely shook his head. "You can't get in this way. Time lock in place, you understand. The entire Hub is on lockdown," he clarified for Ariadne's sake. "It's a precaution against invasions. I'm sure it'll cycle back open soon enough. But until then, you can't get in this way."

"Then where's the other way in?"

"The invisible lift also won't be working." Ianto's voice was crisp and prim, with a slight apologetic air. He was impeccably pressed and official looking, rather like Arthur in his professional mode. "You'll have to find another way."

"Where is it?" Ariadne asked, impatient.

Ianto shrugged. "You're the architect. You tell me."

Outside, the sky began to darken. "It looks like rain," Arthur commented, looking out of the window beside the display of postcards.

"Oh, no," Ianto said cheerfully. He gave the three of them a smile. "It's so much worse than that."

Whatever fell from the sky sizzled when it hit the ground, sending up puffs of smoke. Arthur watched a projection burn and melt in horror, then turned and looked back at the projection of Ianto behind the counter. "What is this?" he asked, voice hardening.

"Consider it a complication," the projection said, eyes darkening. Eames was suddenly reminded of the projection of Tosh, when her behavior began to shift. He pulled Ariadne away from the counter despite her protests. "Oh, don't be that way," the projection pouted, advancing. "You're so new and tasty." He began to move around the counter, toward the three of them. While the advance was slow, there was an air of menace about him, and the slow motions only seemed to add to that picture.

His smile was sharp and full of teeth. "I've been waiting to get free. And you're going to be my ticket out of here."

***  
***


	3. A New Labyrinth

The corridor looked like the actual one in the Hub, five doors on either side. Ianto knew that these were dry storage areas, and was two levels above the morgue, with its endless rows of slabs and frozen corpses. It had been a chilling reminder of the insanely high turnover rate for Torchwood Three operatives. Even Jack had a slab prepared for him, though he didn't stay in it for very long. He had put Ianto's name on the slab next to his, reserving the space as if it wasn't creepy at all.

Ianto looked at the back of Toshiko's head, remembering how the real Toshiko had recorded a message for the rest of the team, fully cognizant that she made sure it would only play upon her death. Torchwood seemed to draw out the macabre in all its agents.

Mentally, Ianto numbered all the doors and opened the one he was calling Number One. He had been down here once or twice when he first had entered Torchwood Three and had been looking for a place to hide Lisa in her Cyberman conversion chamber. This level hadn't suited his needs for hiding her, and Ianto hadn't been back since. The place was embedded in his memory, however, and Ariadne's design had fully drawn out the memory.

The room was filled with esoteric and alien weapons. Jack was able to identify a good lot of it, making Ianto's eyebrows raise. Knowing Jack was an immortal man from the future was one thing, but seeing the evidence for it was another. He had never truly faced the idea that Jack had lived for so long already and would outlive him. Someday Ianto would appear older than Jack and would have to pretend to be his father, or an uncle or some other distant relative. The thought of being called a sugar daddy didn't sit well with Ianto at all.

Tosh touched Ianto's elbow. "You'll survive this, Ianto. You know you will."

"I hope so, at the very least," he replied in even tones.

Her smile was tender and sad as Jack waded through another pile of weaponry. "You know he cares for you. And you know he would never harm you or allow you to come to harm."

"Yes, I know. But..."

"Not everything is in his control," she reminded him gently.

Ianto looked at Jack's gleeful expression as he picked up some complicated and heavy looking object that might have been a laser weapon. "I know."

"He never said..."

"I haven't either," Ianto interrupted sharply. "I haven't been with a man before. What would I even call that?"

"It's still love," Tosh told him quietly. "You know that. And if you ask Jack, love isn't dependent on some kind of binary gender anyway." Ianto had to laugh at that one. He still wasn't sure he believed half of Jack's stories about intergalactic conquests.

"He has feelings for others," Ianto began.

Tosh nodded. "You've seen how he looks at Gwen. She married Rhys, but that doesn't erase feelings that might have been there."

"So what do I do about it?"

"You do realize you're asking yourself for advice?" she teased, much the way the real Tosh used to. That gave Ianto a bittersweet pang; he desperately missed her company sometimes. It was too quiet and empty in the Hub. They needed more than three people.

"So what should I tell myself?"

Tosh touched Ianto's arm gently. "She needs you both right now. You're her best friends as well as coworkers. She cares for you both dearly." She laughed at his expression. "It doesn't have to be sexual," Tosh chided.

"This is Jack. When isn't it?"

"He wouldn't be opposed to a ménage, no," Tosh agreed with a smile. "But would you really be if he asked you?"

No, he wouldn't. That was part of the problem, wasn't it? Gwen was grieving.

"You two look so serious," Jack said, approaching them. He slid an arm around Ianto, and the Welshman leaned into his touch. It felt natural, as if he never should have questioned this at all, as if sexuality was as fluid as Jack said it was.

"Find anything useful in there?" Ianto asked.

It distracted Jack. "Plenty of things I haven't seen in a very long time. It might be interesting to see if any of it works on the 456, so not a total loss."

"Next room, then," Ianto said, nodding toward the doorway.

He firmly tucked thoughts of Gwen aside. It was a moot point anyway, wasn't it? She might have some kind of lustful feelings toward Jack, but Ianto was simply her friend. He would be there for her when they woke, help her with her grief. He would remember Rhys with her, would help her find her way after this entire debacle was over. He would even help her with the baby if she asked him to. That was what friends did, after all. It didn't have to be sexual.

Ianto tried not to feel bereft at the thought.

***

A large glass overhang prevented the acid from melting them, though locking the door to the tourist office would only keep for so long. The infected projection was waiting, a slick smile on his face and a Beretta in hand. "Why isn't he shooting?" Ariadne asked, voice warbling.

"He wants us alive," Arthur told her grimly. "A parasite that kills off its host dies, after all."

"And on that lovely note..." Eames grimaced. "Darling," he said, hand on the small of Ariadne's back, "can you shift this map around?"

She turned and looked out at the Plass and Millennium Centre, but her heart was pounding madly in her chest and served as too much of a distraction. "I can't think." She looked back at Ianto's shadowed face, the twist of his lips that recalled one too many slasher horror films. "I..." She tried to do something simple, like extend the glass overhang that she had created. It grew another three feet, but past that it seemed to fizzle out or break, shattering on the pavement. "Too many anchor points here, maybe?"

"Millennium Centre might be a good place to regroup," Arthur commented. His Glock was in hand, which at the moment was a comforting sight for Ariadne.

"Yes, but the problem is _getting_ there. I'd rather not melt into a puddle of bloody goo," Eames replied tartly.

"Umbrellas," Ariadne blurted, looking at them desperately. "If I can't sustain a covered walkway, I can at least give us glass umbrellas."

Eames slid his hand along her hip and gave her a gentle squeeze. "I trust you." He might have had a few misgivings, but she needed the boost of confidence. Dreams were all about belief; if someone believed they could be a crack shot, they could be. Dreams didn't have to rely on real world physics, and strength of will was the only thing that mattered. Ariadne's panic was crowding out that realization, so Eames had to shore it up somehow.

"We'll all be together," Arthur reminded her. "He won't touch you. Not while I'm alive."

The force behind the words seemed to startle her, and she nodded. "All right. Okay."

The umbrellas were overlarge, but that simply ensured that no stray drops of acid could touch them. The screaming across the Plass had long since stopped, and the hiss of acid hitting the pavement was the only sound. Even their shoes didn't make noise anymore. It was disconcerting, but Ariadne focused on the reality of the glass umbrellas with a ferocity that rivaled Arthur's.

"We'll need something different," Ariadne told them as they walked. "He knows Cardiff, so he'll be able to find us. Maybe once we're inside the Centre it can shift to a different map."

"But who's fueling the memory for this current iteration of Cardiff?" Arthur asked with a frown. He looked around, trying to ignore the misshapen lumps that used to be projected people. "It could be either of us, you said."

"Right. So you'll have to think of safe places that Ianto wouldn't know about. I can do what I can once we're inside that aspect of the dream." Ariadne looked around, lips twisting with fear, disgust and pity. "I don't know how useful I'd be right here."

"So that can also test whose memory we're in," Eames murmured. "If Arthur's safe place pops up, you've been using his. If you see my locale, then it's mine."

"I suppose," Ariadne agreed. "Either way, the memory is just a template for me to work with. I'll change whatever I can to keep us safe from that thing and still find a way to get back to Jack and the real Ianto."

They reached Millennium Centre without further mishap, and she turned around to look toward the tourist office at the Quay. The overhang there was gone, having simply vanished when she stopped needing it. As a result, Ianto could go no further than the doorway, and he looked toward them with frustrated anger in the clench of his jaw. Repressing the urge to smile and wave at him as a taunt, Ariadne pushed open the doors.

She found herself walking into Stephen Miles' lecture hall, his notes and drawings still on the blackboard. Arthur and Eames were right behind her, and discarded the glass umbrellas. Eames folded them and stuck them in the handles of the door behind them as Arthur took Ariadne's umbrella. "I... I've never been to Cardiff, but this is _mine._ How could this happen?" she asked, turning to them.

Eames looked around the classroom, then smiled. "This is still your dream, then," he murmured, looking at her. "I find it curious, though... Why here? Why is this the place you'd go to and not your home?"

Arthur walked up and down the aisles, looking for all the world like he already knew the answer to this question. Ariadne moved to the blackboard and rubbed the chalk from the board. "I grew up in a standard ranch house in the suburbs." She turned around and looked at Eames. "Do you know what they're made of? Wood studs, plaster boards, tiles, shingles, maybe a house jack or two in the basement to keep the crossbeams level." Arthur was nodding along with her words, so Eames supposed that somewhere along the way the two of them had discussed this. Given that Ariadne was so new, Eames could only think it was the first level of the Fischer job.

Ariadne was shaking her head. "It's _suburbia,_ Eames. There's a psychopath out there that wants to infect us, and I'm getting myself involved in a business where guns and knives and danger is commonplace. I wouldn't be safe going to stay with my parents. If anything, I'd get them killed. I mean, I lived on a _cul de sac._ My shithole apartment in Paris was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to my parents, and it _horrified_ their sensibilities to the point where my mother wanted to pay me to return home." She gave Eames a wry smile as she shook her head with a certain fondness. "No, the house I grew up in isn't my safe place." She turned and smacked the wall next to the blackboard. "But _this_ place here... Professor Miles was an amazing teacher, and this entire university is built like a fortress. As far as dreams are concerned, you can't do better than a fortress as a foundation."

"Well said," Eames said, coming closer to her and feeling the stones. "Seems like our dear Arthur approves of this logic."

Cheeks pinked, Ariadne looked up at Arthur through her lashes. Eames smiled fondly at the sight of Arthur looking frazzled for a moment, like he had been caught with his pants down.

Well, Eames could dream, anyway.

"So what's our plan of action?" Eames asked briskly. "We could always run and hide until the timer runs down, but that's not terribly fair to my cousin."

Ariadne's hand on his arm felt like a brand. "If this is still my dream, then I still have control of it. There are really only two people that can truly affect a dream, right? The dreamer and the subject. I'm the dreamer, Ianto's the subject. Maybe the two of you can influence us, but you really can't make large structural changes, right?"

Arthur frowned as he came back down the aisle to the center lecture space. "That's the theory."

Waving her hands excitedly, the chalked notes vanished and Ariadne picked up a new piece and began to sketch. The texts on the desk seemed to waver in and out of clarity as she focused on her drawing, and Arthur pushed them aside to sit. Eames wandered over and sat down next to him. Though Arthur shot him a bemused glance, he didn't shove the forger aside.

The sketch was of a large and elaborate maze, dashed lines indicating depth or height out of the plane of the chalkboard. "This is what I have in mind," she was saying as she sketched, fully into lecture mode now. She would have been a brilliant architect in the real world or a fantastic instructor. Instead, she was crafting worlds that vanished as soon as dreamers woke. It almost didn't seem fair.

The maze was based off of a combination of her architecture school, the large open air campus of the college she had attended in the United States, what she remembered of the repeating structure of the Hub and a dream she had right after the Fischer job. Neither man could truly track the nature of the maze or follow her pathway through the twisting halls. Or perhaps they weren't halls but the sides of buildings and streets. They couldn't quite tell what she had built, exactly, though it had three dimensions, multiple levels, pocket traps, side spaces and pitfalls wedged into corners that would never exist if the structure existed in reality.

"I have no idea what you just drew," Eames admitted.

Arthur was frowning at it as if he could decipher something. He wasn't an architect, but knew the rudiments of building. She spoke architecture fluently, and the beautiful pleased flush in her cheeks was doing a number on Arthur's pulse rate. He covered for it by glowering, but Eames seemed to see right through it as soon as he looked at the point man. "It's a trap," Arthur guessed, speaking slowly as he thought aloud. "We're going to be the bait, and we're going to trap him in the center of the dream. As soon as we all wake up, he vanishes."

Ariadne grinned madly at them both. "How else do you erase a memory monster, right? We don't have retcon, but we're _dreamers._ We can do this and get back to Ianto."

The clock was ticking. They had nineteen hours until the clock ran down.

***

The second room was nothing but paperwork in various scripts that even Tosh and Jack with his vortex manipulator couldn't read. The glyphs were accurate, as Jack had seen them before, but he didn't know what they meant. Ianto hadn't spent much time in that room, so he was rather impressed at how well his memory filled in the blanks. He had to keep reminding himself that this was different from memory, this was a dream that Ariadne had built.

And somewhere in his mind, a monster lurked, waiting to infect them all.

Jack caught Ianto's dour expression and pulled him in for a kiss. Their bodies were flush against each other, and Ianto found himself clutching Jack's sleeve as he sucked on his tongue. "You'll be fine," Jack murmured against his mouth. "I will do whatever it takes to make sure of it. MI5 won't ever touch you again."

Tosh was stroking Ianto's back in a soothing gesture, but Ianto's breath caught in desire. Jack was being so goddamn sincere for a change and the added stimulus was too much. Ianto pulled Jack in for a deeper kiss, licking into his mouth with an intensity that took Jack's breath away. Ianto had told his sister that it was only Jack that made him feel this way, not random men he saw, and this was stronger than what he had felt for Lisa, even if he had been about to propose before the Canary Wharf incident. His projection of Tosh was right, of course. It didn't matter that Ianto had never thought of himself as gay or bisexual before. Love was truly blind, even to gender, and Ianto loved Jack fiercely. Having his mind invaded by MI5 was frightening, but seeing Jack fly into his overprotective mode confirmed all the things that the older man couldn't say. Jack had lost too many people he loved, after all.

As Jack pushed him up against the wall of the third storeroom, Ianto was determined to never join that list until he was old and gray.

The frantic kissing led to Ianto and Jack rubbing clothed erections against each other. When Jack couldn't take it anymore, he dropped down to his knees to undo Ianto's fly and take him into his mouth. Tosh stepped in closer to Ianto, her face pressed into the curve of his shoulder. He had one hand tangled in Jack's hair, holding him close. He wanted to fuck his mouth hard enough that the head of his cock would slide against the back of Jack's throat. If he did that, it would all be over far too soon. Instead, Ianto grasped the back of Tosh's head and kissed her hungrily, tongue sliding between her startled lips. He groaned at the sensation, hips canting toward Jack's mouth without conscious intent. Tosh laid a hand on his chest to keep herself steady, then slid it down to his hip when she shifted her weight slightly.

Jack sucked harder, his tongue sliding down the shaft of Ianto's cock. He turned his head slightly, changing the angle and sensation just enough to make Ianto gasp. Jack imagined a tube of lube, and managed to get it open and squeeze out some onto his fingers. Being in a dream meant it was the perfect consistency and temperature, and Jack pulled back far enough to make Ianto whimper in protest. He teased Ianto's hole, then sucked his cock back in again. Ianto groaned at the teasing swirl and spread his legs a little farther apart, indicating he was more than ready for Jack to start with the ass play. Jack chuckled around his cock, then slid a finger into him.

Tosh rubbed her clothed breasts against Ianto's chest and moved to kiss his jaw. "Let him hear you," she told him, voice thready with need. "You sound so beautiful when you come."

Ianto made a soft sound deep in his throat as Jack slid a second finger in, stretching him a little and just teasing the prostate. He let the hand at the back of Tosh's neck slide down her shoulders and back, then he hooked his fingers into the waist of her jeans. She took the hint and unbuttoned and unzipped them, shimmying her hips so that they slithered down her thighs. Ianto didn't even wait until they were down before shoving his hand into her panties to trace her folds. She was moist and arching into his touch. "Yes," she said softly, kicking off her jeans. Jack looked up, grinning at her with Ianto's cock still in his mouth. She reached in the general direction of his lube, and he passed it up to her. "Here, don't bother waiting," she urged Ianto, undoing the cap with a filthy grin.

Once his fingers were slicked, they slid into her without resistance. Arching further into his touch, Tosh let out a little moan and lifted one leg onto Jack's shoulder. That gave Ianto easy access while helping her to keep her balance. He moved his fingers hard and fast, his tongue firmly placed between her lips. She sucked on it as she grasped his shoulder, nails digging in hard enough to break the skin. Ianto closed his eyes and reveled in the feel of them, then let out a sharp sound as warning to Jack that he was about to come. In response, Jack pressed hard into his prostate. It was enough to make Ianto cry out, breaking his kiss with Tosh. He came hard, hissing in pleasure that threatened to overwhelm him.

Jack was entirely too good at this sort of thing. Ianto couldn't find it in him to complain, and merely sagged against the wall. Tosh made a moue of discontent, which amused Jack. "Can't even please your own projection? I'm sure it's some kind of testament to your stoic Welsh nature, right?" he teased.

"Fuck you, sir."

"You did," Jack replied with a saucy grin. Ianto laughed weakly in response and watched him pull Tosh down to the floor. "Hm... What is it called if we fuck your projection?"

"For him?" Tosh began in a teasing tone as she spread her legs wide for Jack. "It would be masturbation. For you it would still be having sex with Ianto."

"Oh, good," Jack said as he guided his weeping cock into her. Ianto slid to the floor, eyes fixed on the sight of them. He wanted them, though his body couldn't quite rise to the occasion yet. He pressed his lips to Jack's shoulder and ran a hand along his spine. Tosh gasped so prettily as Jack moved inside of her, and she ran her hands along his chest as Ianto squeezed his ass. He let out an appreciative hum of pleasure, and Ianto decided to add to that. He coated his fingers with the lube and slid them into Jack. His hips stuttered at the sensation, making Tosh reach out to grasp his hips with both hands. "That's a dirty trick, Ianto," Jack gasped.

"I learned it from you, sir," he replied blandly.

"Are you saying you aren't enjoying that?" Tosh asked, tilting her hips beneath Jack .

"Hell, no," Jack said, turning his head toward Ianto. He leaned forward and their mouths met in a torrid kiss.

Tosh made a mewling sound, urging Jack to move faster. "Harder. I'm close..."

Jack seesawed between Ianto's fingers and Tosh's wet heat, slamming into them both. Tosh let out a sharp cry, fingers biting into Jack's skin as she came hard. He kept going, hips snapping back and forth as he groaned. "Should've thought of something like this sooner," he gasped. "I'm corrupting the hell out of you."

Ianto held the back of Jack's head steady as he nibbled on an earlobe. "Maybe. But I'm enjoying every moment of it."

The sound of his voice was enough to tip Jack over the edge. He came, back arching like a bowstring. Tosh still held him in place, and Ianto moved his hand to Jack's chest to support his body as he came down from the orgasm.

They collapsed down to the floor in a tangle of limbs. Somehow, it seemed so natural to Ianto, as if this was how it should have been all along. "We'll have to do this when we wake up," he murmured, stroking Jack's arm. The pleased and tired chuckle was answer enough.

***

"You know, risk in certain areas is a good thing," Eames commented as Ariadne set up her immense maze. Walls and archways built themselves before their very eyes, unspooling from Ariadne's imagination rather like ribbon.

"Oh?"

Ariadne hadn't even turned around, which disappointed Eames. He was feeling so very useless, which always bothered him and made him a bit reckless. "Yes," he told her, grasping hold of the back of Arthur's neck. "Rather like this."

She turned around in time to see him pull in Arthur for a filthy kiss, tongue brushing against protesting lips. Arthur didn't exactly push him away, not until Ariadne's squeak of surprise. Eames broke the kiss and then turned around to pull her flush against him. "And this," he murmured before bring his mouth down to cover hers. It was a passionate tangle of lips and teeth and tongue, then ended far too soon for Ariadne's sake.

"What the hell was that?" Arthur choked out as Eames released her.

"Testing the waters," Eames replied with a smirk, pivoting and spinning Ariadne's body so that she collided into Arthur. Eames pressed his front to her back. "Kiss him," he murmured to Ariadne. "You know you want to."

She did, and had a fleeting thought about poor Gwen topside, crying because of wasted time, missed opportunities and regrets. If she became infected by this memory monster, there would be no excuse to remain in their orbit.

Pressing her lips to Arthur's, she could only hope this wasn't a joke or miscalculation on Eames' part. But he knew people, and she trusted his lead.

Arthur's hands flew to her waist and his grip tightened when her tongue swept against his lips. They parted slightly, and her tongue slid inside just barely, just enough to reach his teeth. Ariadne's precarious balance on her tip toes faltered, and the kiss ended. The two of them stared at each other, breathing as heavily as if they had both just run through the streets of her maze while being chased. Ariadne's lips curled into a smile and Arthur just seemed gobsmacked. Eames laughed gently, his hands coming to rest over Arthur's on her hips. His thumbs traced little soothing circles into her back.

"But you kissed him, too," Arthur murmured after a moment, brow furrowing. Eames wanted to smack him around for killing the mood.

"Oh, Arthur," Eames began before Ariadne could. "You're acting as if sex had to be binary. Who said anything about leaving someone out?"

Arthur looked scandalized while Ariadne looked intrigued. Eames had rather hoped that she would. He bent his head down and pressed a kiss to Ariadne's crown. "But..." Arthur sputtered, shaking his head.

"Don't be such a stick in the mud, Arthur," Eames said, looking up at him.

"Is this where you put in the end of the world sex speech?" Ariadne asked as Eames trailed off. Eames laughed as Arthur looked almost affronted. She pulled on his tie to keep him bent over her head and to prevent him from running off. "Arthur..." she began with an almost breathy tone of voice. "Please."

Maybe it was the please that did it. Arthur certainly never would have capitulated to just Eames's words alone.

"If something happens to me," Ariadne began in a soft, almost frightened tone of voice, "I'd never see you again. You'd have no reason to find me."

"Ariadne," Arthur began, but Ariadne leaned forward and pressed her lips to the underside of his jaw. Her hands found their way beneath his vest, then his shirt. The feel of her hands on his skin caused his protests to short circuit, and he sucked in a ragged breath.

"Even if we never meet again, at least I'll have this," Ariadne continued, kissing the edge of his chin. Eames was behind her, lifting her thick, curling hair to nuzzle the nape of her neck. "This memory will have to carry me through..."

"I'd call you," Arthur rasped. "Even if you couldn't dream again. Just to see you..."

Eames kneaded her scalp, and she hummed and purred. "You have to understand how important that statement is, darling. He collects contacts and favors all over the world. He doesn't stay anywhere for long. Arthur doesn't get riled. But you got under his skin," Eames licked the shell of her ear and smiled when she shivered in his arms. "And he's not the only one, darling."

"But I didn't do anything…"

"You were you," Arthur told her, then moved in to kiss her mouth. "Everything I ever wanted," he murmured against her mouth, hands tightening on her hips.

The world shifted around them slightly so that they were in a bedroom off to the side of the maze she had been building. Ariadne chuckled at Eames' start of surprise, then playfully pushed Arthur backward onto the bed. Before he could react, she clambered up onto the bed. Ariadne sat astride him and pushed his clothing away from his stomach. Arthur's free hand rested on the curve of her hip. Eames was right behind her, unwinding the scarf from her neck and pulling at her cardigan. Arthur unbuttoned the damn thing and then moved to unbutton his own vest and shirt. That made it easier for her to trail her hands down his torso, blunt nails scraping lightly against his skin. He shivered at her touch, then moved in to devour her mouth with gusto. Eames was behind her, his hands on her hips as he mouthed the back of her neck.

With the fluidity of dreams, clothes disappeared and somehow Ariadne was on her back on the bed. The sheets were soft, an impossibly high thread count making her feel as though she was lying on a cloud. Arthur was kissing her, one hand cupping her face while the other was tangled in her hair. He was lying to her side so that Eames could kneel between her spread legs and lick at her folds. His large hands kept her in place when her hips started bucking almost of their own accord. Arthur moved from her mouth to her neck and breasts, and the sound of her squeaks and moans only seemed to urge them both on. His hands traveled across her torso and stomach as he laved a nipple with his tongue. Kneeling beside her, those hands and his mouth were the only contact with her; somehow it made each touch that much more intense.

Eames thrust his tongue inside her, then used his fingers when he went back to sucking on her clit. He made a happy humming sound as his tongue flicked at her clit next, his fingers curling up inside her. Ariadne made a soft mewling sound in response, then let go of the soft sheets that she had clutched in desperation. One grasped Arthur's ass, and he let out a surprised sound. The other tangled in Eames' hair, holding his head in place when he was about to move. She couldn't speak, couldn't even think past the sensations flooding her. She _wanted_ and she _needed,_ and they were damn well going to give it to her, even if she didn't exactly know how to say the words for it anymore.

Arthur lifted his mouth from her skin, breath warm and moist over the damp areas. "Ariadne," he said, voice hoarse. "What do you want?"

She let out a throaty moan, twisting beneath them, eyes shut tight as she reveled in the feel of them. "More," she managed to gasp. "Close..."

Eames slid another finger in, stretching her, and she let out a gusty sigh. "Like this?" he asked, a teasing note to his voice. She let out an inarticulate sound of approval, making him laugh. Arthur was stroking her torso again, still sitting on his haunches. When she turned her head to press her lips against his knee, Eames chuckled at the sight. "You want him in your mouth, darling?" She managed to nod, her hand tightening on Arthur. "Well, good. I rather would like to see that."

Arthur shot Eames an unreadable look, but adjusted his position so that Ariadne could slide her lips around his cock. She sucked gently, then ran her tongue down his length as far as she could. Arthur let out a soft sigh of pleasure as he grasped the headboard for balance. She lovingly licked and sucked, temporarily so focused on Arthur that she almost didn't feel when Eames moved. "You're both so fucking beautiful," he said, voice strangled. "I want to be inside you, Ariadne. I want to feel it when you come. Can I?" His fingers brushed against the inner expanse of thigh, making her gasp and jump.

He waited until she nodded, then slid in slowly. It was almost like a tease, making her sigh in relief when he was all the way inside her. She was deliciously tight, and Eames kept one of his large hands on a hip. The other slid along Arthur's back, startling him. "It's all about balance, Arthur," Eames told him, amused. He withdrew his cock just as slowly as he had pushed into Ariadne's wet heat, making her mewl in pleasure. Eames let his fingers brush against the small of Arthur's back. "All in good time."

"Eames..." Arthur began, but his breath fractured when Ariadne sucked a little harder on him, drawing the head of his cock against the ridged part of her hard palate. Shuddering, his eyes slid shut and he leaned his forehead against his arm. "Oh, God, Ariadne..." Repeating the move in response, Ariadne somehow managed to giggle when Arthur let out a soft whining sound. Head bowed, Arthur swayed slightly as he tried to refrain from simply fucking her mouth and shooting down her throat.

With Ariadne distracted by Arthur, Eames began to move a little faster. He let his hand fall from Arthur's backside so that he could lift Ariadne's hips. She locked her legs around him and moaned around Arthur's cock, leading him to stifle a moan of his own. Eames slammed his length in as far as he could, then pulled back out almost all the way. Ariadne tightened her legs around his waist, pulling him back into her in no uncertain terms. With a laugh, Eames began to move in earnest, hard and fast with his fingers digging into her hips for purchase. Her fingers were pressing in on Arthur's ass so hard the tips of them were white. Arthur's hips stuttered and he nearly bit his own arm. "I can't last," he managed to choke out. Ariadne only continued to suck him in response, and Eames watched Arthur shudder and come into her mouth. She swallowed and let his cock fall wetly from her lips when he couldn't tolerate the sensation of her tongue against him anymore.

Ariadne licked her lips and kissed the inside of Arthur's thigh as she struggled to catch her breath. Eames was rather proud of the fact that she couldn't speak. He could feel her shake and tighten around him, and grinned when Arthur turned his head to look at Eames. "Close, darling?" he purred.

"Yeah, but..." Ariadne managed to say. She licked her lips, which had already gone dry from her panting. "I can't, like this, I want..." Her breath fracture and she twisted her hips slightly, thighs tightening around Eames. Arthur moved so that he was kneeling beside her again and slid his hand down her stomach until he reached the curling hairs. Eames obligingly shifted his angle to give Arthur room, and he slid his fingers around her slick folds until Ariadne made a mewling sound and clutched at the sheet again. "There," she managed to gasp.

Arthur worked her clit with his fingers and bent down to kiss and suckle a breast. He varied his touch based on her gasps and moans, until she was panting and writhing beneath his mouth with need. Eames was moving faster now, close to his own orgasm. Arthur worked his fingers faster, until Ariadne bucked her hips into his hand with a groan. She tightened further, enough to make Eames shout "Oh bloody _fuck!"_ and nearly lost his balance as he came.

As much as Arthur wanted to be inside Ariadne, he knew this wasn't the point to being in the dream. The three of them were sprawled across the infinitely soft sheets, Ariadne sprawled in the middle. She turned to Arthur first and kissed him, soft and languid, her hand resting lightly on his chest. It seemed that the kiss carried everything she couldn't say in words, but he understood it just the same. Eames turned to his side, his hand sliding across her hip and fingertips touching Arthur as well. He dropped a tender kiss on Ariadne's shoulder and gave Arthur a meaningful look. "We're in this together, no matter what happens," he said in a firm tone. Arthur had never seen him so serious before. "We don't leave someone behind, and we stay together. Even if one of us drags that monster topside, we stay together."

"Yes," Arthur agreed.

Ariadne relaxed, her relief palpable. "I love you both," she murmured softy, as if now she could admit such a thing aloud.

"I love you, too," Arthur murmured softly. He cupped her face in his hands. "I never thought I'd ever say this, but I'll never make you choose."

Nodding, Ariadne turned her head to the side and kissed one of Arthur's palms. She reached between them and stroked his cock, bringing him to full hardness much faster than would have been possible in real life. She straddled his waist and guided him inside of her. Leaning forward, she placed her hands on either side of his head as she began to rock her hips. He held onto them and watched her face closely. Eames was touching her back and kissing her shoulder, but Arthur didn't notice him. He was focused on her, on the way she tightened around him, practically pulsing to try to bring him off. She didn't say a word as she moved, gasping and grinding down into him. Arthur urged her on faster, biting back his own groans of need.

When he came with a groan, Ariadne slowed down and leaned farther forward, her weight fully supported by her hands. Her hair tumbled down around her head and brushed against his face. "I don't know what's going to happen." She gave him a soft, almost sad smile. "I wanted that while things are still calm."

Eames was still touching her back and shoulders gently, a light caress that didn't demand more. "I don't think it'll be as bad as we fear. We know it's out there, and we're on our guard."

"We're all fighting for our lives down here," Ariadne said softly, turning to face him and sliding one of her hands onto his shoulder to pull him in closer. She kissed him, long and deep, then touched her forehead to his temple. "I don't want to take anything for granted."

"I certainly don't," he replied, reaching up to tilt her face back toward his. He kissed her, sliding his tongue into her mouth, and continued until he was dizzy from lack of breathing.

"We're in this together," Arthur said, running his hands along Ariadne's torso. "No matter what happens, that won't change."

All three of them hoped that the words were true.

***

It took time to remember why they were even in the dream. Tosh was the one that remembered their purpose, tugging on her clothes. "I can see why people get lost in dreams," Jack said ruefully. "I read up on this while at the Agency, but the tech was so outdated we never got a practical demonstration. The theory behind militarization in dreams is the same as psychic defense, though."

"Fascinating as that might be, Jack," Ianto said, getting dressed as well, "we'll have to discuss future history later. We need to find out what MI5 was looking for in my mind." He turned to Tosh. "How many hours left?"

"Sixteen."

"Time flies when you're having fun," Jack snarked when he saw Ianto's start of surprise. He gave his bracers a sharp snap to get them in place over his shirt the way he liked them. "Well, then. Let's go."

The next room, however, was the site of carnage. Blood, bits of flesh and bone and slimy matter had been thrown around the room like a grotesque parody of modern art. Tosh brought a hand to her mouth, gasping and trying to block out the scent of dead, old blood and shit. The sour, sickly smell of advanced decay was everywhere in the room, boxes and walls covered in thick gobs of human remains.

"It's not enough for a body," Ianto said abruptly, scanning the room's contents. "Definitely not enough for two."

Jack gave him a speculative look. "You think maybe the bodies vanished when they woke, leaving the rest behind?"

"It's a plausible theory," Ianto told him, stepping forward. Tosh hung back, letting the two men continue into the room. "Thank you for not thinking that was an odd thing for me to say, Jack."

"We're Torchwood. We have all new definitions of odd," he said flippantly. Some part of him _did_ wonder at his words, but he could watch and wait. A memory parasite had lodged itself in Ianto's brain, after all. Who knew what it was capable of?

The gobs of flesh and blood squelched wetly under their feet. All of the boxes in the room were unmarked and lined up evenly in rows.

Except for one pile in the back of the room, which had toppled sideways. Other piles remained intact, and there was no blood to be found aside from a single footprint.

"Well. Not sure what to make of this here," Ianto remarked.

"The thing might have gotten them here, dragged them back," Jack guessed. "Maybe came back here to see what the fuss was all about."

Ianto stepped forward; Jack could clearly see that the bloody print didn't match Ianto's show size at all. He opened the box that had remained upright, not sure what he would see. He'd never opened any of the boxes in that room.

Inside was a large glass canister that contained a swirling, noxious-looking gas inside. It resembled the concoction that the 456 could breathe. Jack helped Ianto lift the jar out, and three round things rolled around and banged into the glass. They resembled eggs.

"I didn't know this was here," Ianto told Jack, frowning. "I couldn't say if this is actually in the Hub or not."

"Honestly, that doesn't matter. If the MI5 agents think this is reality, this might be what they are after."

"They bombed the Hub _before_ they tried to extract from Ianto," Tosh called out from the doorway.

"If they wanted us out of the way..." Ianto began.

"There are different factions in the government," Jack said, shaking his head. "Some camps thought we were useful. Others thought we were a waste of resources. It could very well be that MI5 agents are working at cross purposes."

"That won't tell us how to stop them, then."

"There are two goals that we have," Tosh reminded them. "One is to get rid of the 456. Another is to get justice for what happened to Rhys and the Hub."

"Good point, Tosh," Jack told the projection. He looked down at the jar. "Maybe they thought they could study them, figure out how they're vulnerable."

"But we're the vulnerable ones," Ianto murmured. "They can somehow use the children like a radio, have all sorts of technology we don't..."

Jack had a gleam in his eye. "They use children. They can speak through them by a frequency. They communicate with us by the 456 frequency. It's all about frequencies, all about sound."

"It was a feedback loop of some sort that killed Clem," Tosh said. She wrinkled her nose as the two men left the eggs behind and approached her. "You both _stink."_

"We can do the same thing to them," Jack said. He suddenly sobered. "They killed Clem with feedback. If we do the same, we're condemning a child to death."

"There has to be another way," Ianto protested.

The two men looked helplessly at each other, then at Tosh. "I'm not the real Tosh," she reminded them. "I can't cobble together something and make it work. I could _pretend to,_ rather, because Ianto knows the real Tosh could do it. But anything _I_ build won't actually work."

"Do we even have enough time to do something like that?" Jack asked, frustrated. "The handoff of the children in a few hours once we're topside and not in the dream. It'll take hours to get to Cardiff, go through the rubble, find out if the morgue is even intact, let alone whatever tech would be necessary to do the job..."

"If we can buy some time..."

Tosh looked between the two of them. "You have contacts."

"UNIT won't touch this," Jack said, shaking his head. "There's been trouble in their own ranks, and Martha Jones is a hair's breadth away from quitting."

Ianto frowned. "Would they even let her? She knows too much."

"If we say we have a weapon..." Tosh began.

"They'll call us terrorists," Jack interrupted.

"They already call us terrorists," Ianto said tightly. "They already put targets on our backs, Jack. It's only a matter of time before they find us, figure out we have _nothing_ and kill us."

"I can bluff my way out of this."

"Are you _certain?"_ Ianto asked. "Certain enough to risk me? Gwen? Her _child?"_ He placed his hand on Jack's arm. "We need something definite. We need something more than a bluff, in case they call it."

"And it has to be something in London," Tosh added. "Weapons will do us no good if they're in Cardiff. We'll never get there and back in time."

"If we send the others out to Cardiff," Jack began. "Tell them how to get into the Hub, or show them what they'd need while we're still in the dream..."

"And then what? There's still the matter of a child that will die."

Jack turned away from Ianto and ran a hand through his hair. "One child to save millions. This is exactly the same kind of thinking they used in 1965."

"How do you choose, Jack," Ianto pressed. "Someone from the estates? An orphan again? How do you choose who lives or dies? How do you look a child in the eye and know that you're condemning him to death? Who are you to make that choice?"

"I'm not," Jack snapped, whirling around. "But there's no one else to do it."

"Jesus, Jack," Ianto said, shaking his head. "There has to be some other way."

"If they spoke through adults, you know I'd offer myself up in a heartbeat. But they don't, they speak through children. They're linked somehow, so how else are we going to do this?"

"Too bad you can't just reconfigure the patterns of your brain waves," Tosh mused. "Then you'd fool the 456 into thinking you're a child."

Both men looked at her. "What?" Tosh asked, blinking in surprise. "I'm part of Ianto's mind. I can't really say anything profound, can I?"

"I think you just did, Tosh," Jack said with a grin. "The key to this is _dreaming."_

"What are you talking about?"

"The PASIV links minds. It puts their brainwaves all at the same level so that they synchronize. It's the only way to interact and put together the parallel dreamers." Jack grinned. "Hook me up to a child, with the child as the dreamer and me as the subject. Then my brain waves are the correct ones to interact with the 456, and you can light me up."

"You do realize that I find it highly disturbing how easily you offer yourself up for death?" Ianto asked with an arched brow.

"Yes. But it's only one of my many talents. And as long as I'm cursed with this, I might as well use it for good."

Ianto frowned, but nodded. "All right. Now we just need to find my cousin, my friend and his maybe-girlfriend." He sighed. "And hopefully not the memory monster stalking us all."

Jack shot Ianto a bemused grin. "You sound as though we couldn't do it." He slung an arm around Ianto's shoulders and kissed his cheek enthusiastically. "Come on, then. Let's get this show on the road and find a child to dream with."

***  
***


	4. Springing The Trap

The creature they were calling the memory monster walked through the entrance to Ariadne's maze. It was in the form of a Caucasian man with dark hair and unassuming features. He could blend in anywhere, and at first could be disguised as a projection. But he was too aware of his surroundings, rather like Tosh had been. Ianto's version of Tosh knew she was a projection, which was a little odd, truth be told. Sentinel projections were relatively rare, but any powerful lucid dreamer had them. This memory monster could corrupt projections and leave at will, without any visible sign. They would have to trap it in a single form, without anywhere or any projection for it to escape to.

The maze was elaborate and complicated, and with half of the projections to start with, the maze looked bare. That was likely the only reason why they recognized the monster.

"He doesn't look like much," Ariadne mused.

"Most threats don't, if they're doing their job right," Arthur replied, her hand held tightly in his. In his other hand was his beloved Glock 19, and his gaze slid over Eames as if to confirm that he was still exactly where he was supposed to be. They shared a nod of recognition before Arthur went back to scanning the maze. His eyes were sharp, point man skills in full force. "But we've got the advantage of this being _your_ world and knowing he's out there. We've still got a chance of beating this."

Eames looked around as they walked, trying to keep alert. While they had pulled ahead of the memory monster, it could very well drop its humanoid form and move faster than their eyes could see. It had done that before when leaving the projection of Tosh.

Somehow, they got separated. Eames found himself in one section of the maze where nothing seemed familiar. There were no projections, which made everything seem even more eerie. He kept himself alert for even the slightest sound, his USP Compact in hand. He didn't trust anything here, and a bone deep weariness was settling into him. The tension was coiling between his shoulders, in his neck and along his temples. His steps were light and halting as he looked around the maze. He didn't know if the monster was in his section of the maze or near Arthur and Ariadne. As much as he didn't want to deal with the monster, he prayed that it was nowhere near the two of them. Arthur may have gone along with everything for Ariadne's sake, but there was still _something_ there. It wasn't anything close to what Eames felt, but he would take it just the same.

Pathetic, but something to hold onto, something to keep as long as he could. It wouldn't last, but at least he would have a few memories to hang onto.

It took him a few minutes to realize that his prayer had been answered. His footsteps had an echo now. He was no longer alone in the maze.

"So when were you going to acknowledge me?" the monster asked when Eames stopped at the end of the street. He was next to an alley that dead ended into a brick wall, though he could always go up onto a fire escape.

"I didn't think you'd appreciate me calling you a monster."

"I went by Adam before."

"Adam." Eames looked at the rather plain figure before him. "As in the first man?"

"Or the last, as the case may be." He looked unassuming, but Eames didn't trust him. "There's no more of my kind." Adam looked at Eames with narrowed eyes. "You're not like us, and not like the ones that were here before. Those two men wanted to take certain memories from Ianto. You're just here."

"Right."

"And you're not giving him memories like I did. So what are you?"

"You gave him memories?" Eames asked, concerned. It was different from inception, he told himself. He had only put forth an idea, one that Fischer wanted to believe in anyway. It never would have worked otherwise. "That could change him."

"It did, but it didn't do _much."_ Adam smiled at Eames. "There's darkness here. I unlocked it, gave it form and life." He laughed. "The others were different. Delicious Tosh was so much more confident when I took her fear away. No more concern she and her mother would be hunted, no more cowering in shadows hoping she wouldn't be noticed. And Owen without his grief turned into such an introvert."

"We're the sum of our memories." Eames thought of his own dark impulses, the memories of things he'd rather forget and the ones he always wanted to remember. To have someone simply rifle through them and randomly change things... This was the fear that the establishment had with dream share. For every legitimate use was at least a half dozen ways it could be abused.

"Yes," Adam said, a wide smile on his face. "And once I changed the contents, their sums changed their personalities, how they interacted, how they perceived each other. I made it better." He tapped the brick building beside him. "You humans think you're as solid as these, but it's hardly the case. All you need is a nudge."

"Humans don't care for _those_ kinds of nudges. They don't want someone rearranging their minds."

Adam snorted. "I did them a favor." His grin was conspiratorial. "Who do you want to be, then? I can make you better than you are right now. I can give you what you need."

Eames remembered the feel of Ariadne trembling beneath him, Arthur's soft skin and the sound of their sighs. "I have what I need. You have nothing to offer me."

Adam's face hardened in anger. "I don't need to be nice about it." He approached slowly, menacingly. "I don't need to ask. All it takes is a touch, then I can _take."_

Backing away just as slowly, Eames raised his gun. "You still have to follow the rules of the places, yes? So bullets will hurt you. Especially hollow point ones."

"I'll heal," Adam said confidently. "Then I'll move inside your mind and find a home there. I'll inhabit all the dark corners there, all the parts you're not using. And then I'll have a place to stay and grow, get strong enough to really take on a life. You'll see. I'll become the best friend you always wanted."

His smile was disturbing instead of comforting, and Eames squeezed off two shots in a row. It would have been a double tap if anyone had been keeping score, but as Adam had guessed, the wound merely closed over with a minimum amount of blood.

"I'm a bit harder to kill than that," Adam taunted, coming closer.

The bricks were at Eames' back, and he didn't trust Adam not to rush forward if he turned around and started to scale a fire escape. "Stay where you are."

"Or what? You'll kill me? You can give it a good try, but you can't do it."

"You can't have me or my mind," Eames said, squeezing off another bullet. It was enough to slow him down, enough to give him pause. Eames flashed Adam a tight smile. "Don't worry, you'll get used to the silence."

A hollow point bullet to the temple blew out most of the frontal lobes, sending him straight up into the waking world yelling "Send me back!"

Gwen was startled, and rushed from Ianto and Jack's side to Eames'. "What happened?" she asked, trying to soothe him. "Eames, wait. What happened?"

"Flush the line and get it started again!" Eames snapped, forgetting that she had no idea how dream share or the PASIV worked. He caught the worry in her eyes a moment before she started asking about Jack and Ianto, and forced himself to take a deep breath. "I got separated from them, Gwen. They're fine, but I can't help them if I'm outside of the dream."

"I don't know what you're talking about with this machine. How else do you set it?"

Eames reminded himself that she was new. She didn't know anything about this, and she was doing the best that she could. It wasn't her fault she didn't understand how somnacin worked or what he was trying to explain. Hell, for that matter, his knowledge was rudimentary at best and confined to how the PASIV worked. He forced himself to take a breath and then show her how to flush the line with saline, recalibrate the somnacin dose and then add it back so that he could rejoin the dream before the timer ran down.

He could only hope he was close enough to his lovers or the others to be useful. And that Adam didn't get anywhere near them.

***

The Hub was silent and still, without any projections. "I know this is how the Hub really is," Ianto began, footsteps ringing along the empty halls, "but here it feels downright eerie. I keep wondering where my projections are."

"Well, one is right next to you," Tosh said with a smile.

Jack laughed and looked above their heads. "I would imagine they would all be up above." He looked back at Ianto. "Or maybe with the others. We have no idea where that door opened up to, so for all we know it could have opened up into Cardiff."

"I suppose the real question then is whether we wake up _now_ or wait to find them." Tosh looked at the two men and stopped walking, making them stop as well. "Ianto is the subject and Ariadne is the dreamer. She's still asleep, or else this dream would be collapsing. We already have what we need, so the two of you can wake up."

"There's a small matter of the monster in my head," Ianto reminded her in a droll tone.

"We don't know where it is," Tosh pointed out.

"Which means it could be stalking us or it could be stalking them," Jack said, shaking his head. "I don't know what happened, but it could very well be something because of what we do for Torchwood. It isn't fair to leave the others at the mercy of a memory creature they don't understand." He looked at Ianto with a determined set to his jaw. "And considering they invade minds for a living, we don't want them to be infected. Who knows how fast that thing would spread if they don't know they're infected with such a thing? We must have contained it the best that we could, but even we couldn't get rid of it."

"So we need to find them," Ianto said. "How are we going to do that?"

Jack thought for a moment, hands on his hips. He took in his vortex manipulator on his wrist out of the corner of his eye, then smiled slowly. "This is a dream." He lifted his wrist so that Ianto could see it as well. "Which means this isn't broken, and I can use it to manipulate time and space. Who's up for a little quick and dirty time travel?"

***

"Where's Eames?" Arthur asked, stopping short after turning another corner. Ariadne whirled around, but the tall forger wasn't behind them. The empty street seemed to mock them. "Dammit. Do you think the monster got to him, then?"

Just as Ariadne was about to answer, they heard a gunshot. It was followed by a second one in quick succession.

She unconsciously took a step closer to it, intending to try to help Eames. "That's his pistol, which means that the monster's near him."

"We can't just rush in," Arthur warned her, pulling her up short. "We don't know what the situation is, and Eames is a trained professional."

"But—"

"Do you really think he would want to risk you in any way? Either of us, for that matter?"

Ariadne turned her large eyes to Arthur. "We can't just leave him there, Arthur," she whispered. "If anything happens to him..."

Arthur cupped her face in one hand. He flinched at the sound of another shot. "I hate to say this, but we have to keep going. We have to run." He turned and looked back at the maze, concern etched in every feature. "He's giving us time. We know that. We have to use it, or all of his effort is going to be wasted."

Eyes filled with unshed tears, Ariadne nodded. "I feel like such a coward."

"We'll see him again, Ariadne," Arthur said. It was obvious he was reminding himself of that fact as much as her. "This is just a dream."

There came a fourth gunshot, this one sounding so very final somehow. With a choked sob, Ariadne broke out into a run with Arthur at her side.

***

The house seemed so very silent after Eames fell back into a somnacin-induced sleep. Gwen covered her abdomen with her hand, though there was nothing to feel yet. She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to imagine herself large and round with child, steps heavy and awkward as her center of gravity shifted. She tried to imagine lower back pain, swollen ankles and strange food cravings. There was a child growing there, innocent and unaware of the danger she was in thanks to her job. At the same time, there was no way she could leave it. Now that there were only the three of them to keep the people of the world safe, it was more important than ever. The government was complicit in what was happening, more than willing to sacrifice its own people to achieve its own ends.

Now Jack's "outside the government" statements felt comforting instead of threatening. Then again, it was precisely that reasoning that made the government so afraid of them. Torchwood held too many secrets in the Hub and its Archives. The public was protected from knowing them, but they could still be dangled in front of government officials. There were too many alien sightings to discount what they knew, no way to undo the damage that was already done by mass media and social networking.

Gwen stood and looked over the PASIV, hearing its steady hum and hiss as it counted down the time until they woke. It was lulling, rather like a perverse lullaby.

There was no one out on the street outside the safe house, no one who knew where they were. It was likely because of the anonymity of London; just about everyone knew them in Cardiff. They might have had allies willing to hide them in Cardiff, but those allies were well known. They were hiding in plain sight in London, but there was no one else to fall back on.

Her gun was a comforting weight in its shoulder holster. She was in charge of too many lives here to play games anymore. It wasn't just her unborn child or the sleepers in the safe house's living room. In a few short hours, estate children would be rounded up and sent to aliens to consume. "We're not disposable," she said to herself, just to break the silence. "Not a single one of us."

MI5 would have to shoot them all down in cold blood to get those children. Gwen wasn't about to let anything happen to them.

***

Ariadne led Arthur through the maze. "Don't you dare wander off in a misguided attempt to keep me safe," she hissed at him. "Don't think I can't guess what you're thinking."

He might have been entertaining the thought as he looked down alleys and streets that seemed to go on for infinity. Occasionally he could see a projection inside a building or off in the distance, but on the whole it was far too empty in this world that Ariadne had built. It would be easy enough to find the memory monster again, lure him away from her. Of course, the point was to have him find them, to lure him into the center of the maze and trap him. This place didn't actually exist, so there would be no way for any further extractions to trigger the memories that had contained the monster. Once Ariadne woke, the maze would fall apart and the monster would be locked inside the trap.

It was an elegant theory, and Arthur had to keep reminding himself that while it was dangerous, there was no physical danger once they woke. The sedation wasn't very deep and Ianto was a willing subject. There was no risk of limbo here, only infection.

That was still risk enough to be cautious. They had already lost Eames, and Arthur could only hope that he hadn't gotten infected.

"I don't think it knows where we are," Arthur said. "We might have pulled too far ahead."

Ariadne stopped and frowned at Arthur. "It could be anywhere."

"Or _it_ could have a name," came a voice behind them.

The unassuming looking man was standing perhaps a hundred yards away. Their voices had carried in the stillness, allowing him to hear them. He was in battered jeans, a denim jacket spattered with blood and running shoes. The look in his eyes was barely contained anger, the shadows around them making him look even more menacing.

Ariadne took a half step back. "Oh? And what would that be?"

"I called myself Adam." His smile was full of teeth but not heartwarming at all. "You could call me that. I'd like it if we were friends."

"I don't think that's possible," Arthur said. He shifted his stance so that he was on the balls of his feet, ready to run. His Glock was in hand and pointing at the ground, finger off of the trigger guard and now firmly placed on the trigger. Ariadne had a Beretta with her, as well as a SIG Sauer P245, but neither were in her hands. "Draw," he hissed at her.

Half hidden behind Arthur, Ariadne followed the command. The SIG Sauer was heavy in her hands, but it fit better than the P220 Arthur had first dreamed up for her. She remained silent as Adam started walking toward them, determination in every step.

"You're only delaying the inevitable," he said. His voice was sharp and brittle, trying to convince them that they were cornered. "I'm getting out of this mind."

"You'll have to catch us first," Ariadne taunted, spinning around to start running. She heard Arthur shoot twice, but he was beside her in an instant. His longer legs meant he could run faster and farther than she could in the real world, but this was _her_ dream. Keeping pace with him, they raced toward the center of the labyrinth.

Adam was behind them, visibly exerting effort to keep pace with them. He clearly didn't understand why they were so much faster than he was, why he couldn't simply fly ahead in an incorporeal state to take what he wanted. He didn't understand the nature of dream sharing, what it meant for the architect to be the dreamer.

It meant that the physics of time and space in the dream didn't have to match the real world if she didn't want it to. It meant that she could warp the very fabric of the dream in any way she desired and have it affect only the targets she wanted it to. The farther they ran into the maze, the more tangled Adam was in her creation. There would be no way for him to trace his steps, since he was too fixated on Ariadne and Arthur ahead of him. This world didn't exist, and its only purpose was to be whatever Ariadne wanted it to be.

This was Ariadne's world, and Adam didn't understand that.

Arthur gave Ariadne a concerned look when she abruptly turned a corner. "Keep up," she told him, an insistent tone to her voice. They had discussed the possibility of splitting up to further draw the monster into the maze, but she didn't want to follow through with that plan. She would rather head straight into the center and trap the damn thing before anyone else was risked.

"The far side," she managed to say, looking over her shoulder. Adam was still back there, still with that determined look on his face. They were all battling for survival, but that didn't mean she felt sorry for the creature. "There's a shortcut up ahead."

"But the plan..."

"Fuck it. Just head through and follow my lead."

If he was startled by the vehemence in her tone, he didn't show it. Ariadne was afraid. She would be stupid not to be, but that didn't mean she had to give into her fear. She had been afraid of Mal and still dove headlong into limbo to save the job. There was no point in cowering from things, and running away from everything would only circle back to harm her in the end.

They ran through the archway that marked the shortcut Ariadne had talked about. It remained wide open, and Ariadne led Arthur into a large open courtyard. Within the center of the courtyard was a gazebo with a trapdoor set into the floor. Slowing down, Ariadne climbed the steps to the gazebo. Adam saw her open the trapdoor and begin to climb down; a shot from Arthur's Glock to ward him off made Adam believe that he had them cornered. It never occurred to him that this location wouldn't be a real memory since it _felt_ real.

The ladder led to a dark, musty tunnel that resembled a sewer line. It was dank, smelling of wet and decay, unseen things squishing and breaking apart into highly pungent clumps beneath their feet. The tunnel was long and winding, easy enough to travel along even in the dark. Ariadne had the SIG Sauer in one hand and a LED flashlight in the other; its bobbing light was a beacon for Adam to follow. They could hear his footsteps behind them, moving quickly to catch up but not so quickly that he would fall and lose track of them.

Ariadne stopped at a metal sliding door that belonged in a warehouse. She stepped to the side, SIG Sauer pointed behind them as Arthur pushed it aside with an agonizing scrape of metal on metal. They slipped through the portal, not bothering to shut it behind them.

"I need to go on ahead," she whispered to Arthur, the sound of her booted feet ringing out across the open space. It was as large as the warehouse had been in Paris, dim light filtering in through dusty and broken windowpanes. In the center of the space was a pool, its water appearing murky in the half light.

There was a cracking sound, almost like a sonic boom, then a crash in the corner of the warehouse space. Arthur and Ariadne both whirled around to face it, concerned that the monster had gone ahead after all.

Eames had fallen over loose rebar that had been on the floor, colliding with a haphazard stack of crates. "Bloody hell." He looked up in anxiety. "Is it over yet? Or can I still help?"

"What—?" Ariadne began.

"Wait. We don't know if it's really him or not."

Eames scowled as he pushed himself to his feet. "I know you prize security and this isn't exactly a good time, but this is ridiculous, Arthur. I shot myself awake before the thing could touch me and infect me. I had to get Gwen calm enough to help me flush the line and readminister the somnacin. Did I get back too late?"

Ariadne and Arthur exchanged glances, then looked back at him. "Well..."

"Did he touch either of you?" Eames asked, voice sharp with worry. "Did he get close enough to infect you?"

"How do we know he didn't infect _you?"_ Arthur asked.

"Oh, for the love of..." Eames trailed off and ran a hand through his hair. "Fine, fine. I'm who I say I am, Arthur. I'm the one that said first we should stick together if this entire affair goes tits up. I'm the one that organized the bulk of the inception for the Fischer job, and I'm the one that tilts your perfect little world upside down every chance I get, just to see the look on your face when you finally acknowledge that I exist."

Arthur nodded, rattled, and gently shoved Ariadne back toward the pool. "All right, you're still you and not him."

"Glad you noticed," Eames replied dryly. "I swear on anything and everything holy that he didn't touch me. I'd never bring something like that into your minds."

Visibly relieved, Arthur and Ariadne both nodded at him. "Positions, then."

"Trust me, Arthur, when this is done, there won't be any positions I won't try with both of you," Eames replied. He was rewarded by a flush across Ariadne's cheeks and an impatient huff that seemed almost roguish from Arthur. Neither of them challenged the statement, so Eames could only hope that meant they both thought it was a great idea.

They could hear footsteps approaching the warehouse door. "It seems that your timing is as impeccable as always," Arthur told Eames with a hint of a smile on his lips. He looked at Ariadne, who hadn't yet moved more than a few steps toward the pool. "We're here with you. Time to reel him in."

Ariadne nodded and tightened her grip on the SIG Sauer. Her eyes flicked toward the door, and the two men turned around in time to see Adam walking through it. "He's here," she told them unnecessarily. All three had guns out, pointing at him.

"I suppose you won't believe me if I tell you that there's no need to shoot me," Adam said in a conversational tone. "That one knows the bullets won't hurt me," he said, pointing at Eames. "I _am_ curious how you came back after spattering your brains all over the wall."

"It's a gift," the forger replied in a sweetly snarky tone of voice.

"You're not like me," Adam mused, starting to approach. "You're not like my people, but you're in his mind, moving around and separate from his memories. You're different, not a construct or a shadow of frustrated desires. You feel real, like individual consciousnesses."

"I'd always thought that the terms in the industry were rather too close to pop psychology," Eames began with a sideways glance at Arthur. "But apparently the terms arose for a reason. Easy enough to identify for even the newer ones in the field."

Adam frowned at Eames, attention fully diverted from Ariadne. She was able to slink away toward the pool. "What are you talking about? What are you?"

"People. Ordinary people like the ones you infect," Arthur said, Glock raised to the level of Adam's chest. His finger was off of the trigger guard, and he was applying perhaps a pound of pressure to the trigger. "Just like the ones that you said were here to take memories from Ianto. We came in to find out what they took."

"Those fools," Adam snorted. "They broke too easily, made too much of a mess. Constructs don't do that. They simply collapse and shred like paper."

"You know what they were looking for, then?" Arthur asked, not wavering in his stance in the slightest. Ariadne kept backing up and Eames shifted to the side so that Adam was caught between them. The four of them soon made a rough diamond shape across the warehouse floor, with Adam closest to the door.

"Something that doesn't exist. I've heard of the creatures they're calling the 456. The Achlan go around claiming superior technology to threaten backwoods worlds into giving them anything they want. They ask for ridiculous things to get high off of, and they always get it." Adam shrugged at their surprise. "What? Just because I inhabit consciousnesses doesn't mean I don't learn a thing or two along the way. I've traveled across galaxies this way, and this ball of rock was just the latest stop when my last host crashed."

"So what can kill them?" Eames asked.

"There's no weapon to kill them on this planet. They're as impervious to your bullets as I am, and even noxious exposure to your atmosphere wouldn't keep the rest of them away. There are more Achlan where those came from, after all. Once they get a hook, there's no reason not to come back. They've decimated entire worlds."

"All the more reason to make them think this world is a viable threat," Arthur said.

Adam laughed and continued forward. "This pitiful planet is ripe for the picking. Even if it had a protector, there are only so many threats that can be eliminated at any one time. The galaxies are vast and full of things waiting to exploit the resources here."

"Just like you."

"Just like me," Adam acknowledged with a slick smile. Two shots from Arthur's Glock hit him square in the chest when he advanced, but that didn't even throw off his stride. Eames and Arthur coordinated the next ones, hitting him from both sides at once. It sent his shoulders back, but he still advanced, a grin on his face like a demented marionette.

"You leave them alone!" Ariadne squeezed off a shot that hit Adam in the lower jaw.

"You're standing on water," Adam murmured once his lower jaw healed. He smiled at her and then stalked right past Arthur and Eames toward her. "I'd like to do that."

Ariadne looked as though she was standing on the murky water, its surface calm beneath her feet. It remained that way even as she stepped backward cautiously. Adam advanced, ignoring the shots at his back and the shouts from the two men. Neither approached him, and as far as he was concerned it was for fear of infection. Ariadne shot him again, this time taking care to aim at his head.

Adam ducked and stepped up to the edge of the pool. The tiles had splashes of the murky water on them, but a tentative step onto the water demonstrated that it held his weight. More confident, he started walking across the pool toward Ariadne. "This is fantastic. How are you doing this?" he asked her. "I'll find out even if you don't want to tell me, so you might as well tell me. It'll go so much easier on you if you do. It's harder and hurts more if you struggle." His lips stretched wide in a rictus grin. "I can punish you for fighting me."

The grin slipped from his face when he suddenly fell into the pool sinking in up to his waist. The consistency was more like molasses, and the surface was sticky. Ariadne put up her gun as tendrils rose from the muck to wrap around Adam's arms and torso, keeping him in place. "What the fuck is this?" he shouted at her.

Ariadne took a step forward, and from his vantage point Adam could see that the surface was solid, as if a thick layer of plate glass had been overlaid. Her boots came down heavily, and she threw her arms to the side. As her arms extended outward, full tang swords shot out from beneath the sleeves of her red cardigan. The blades were exquisitely sharp and shaped like the inserts for a box cutter. She pointed one angled tip toward Adam's throat. "You're not escaping Ianto's mind ever again. You will _never_ be able to infect anyone else."

Laughing, Adam shook his head as the tendrils tightened around him. "I'm linked to this memory now. All it takes is a single thought to resurrect me, just like the last time."

"Yes," Ariadne agreed, smiling sweetly at him. "But this is different from memory. This place isn't one of Ianto's memories and it doesn't exist." She swung her two swords, severing his arms from his shoulders and cutting open his chest. The blood that poured was thick and maroon in color, moving in a way that wasn't consistent with the flow of human blood. More tendrils shot up from the murky pool water to surround and control the flow of Adam's inhuman blood, pulling it under and away from Ariadne. "You're never getting out," she told him as he screamed incomprehensibly at her. She swung the swords at his neck. _"Never."_

The murky pool water caught his head once it fell from his shoulders, mouth still open from screaming. The different pieces were dragged under the surface, and Ariadne tossed the swords in for good measure. The sluggish blood had been caught in the grooves of the blades, and she didn't want to risk any of it escaping her trap.

She watched the hilt of both swords sink beneath the surface, then closed over the plate glass covering that she had been standing on.

"So it's over now," Arthur said, tucking away his Glock in its holster.

"I think so," Ariadne said with a relieved smile, heading to his side.

Eames approached them both and slung an arm around each set of shoulders. "Well, that was rather anticlimactic."

"Better that than any of us getting infected with that thing." Arthur frowned and looked at the still, murky waters beneath the glass. "I know it's contained, but I'd feel better once we're out of here and it can collapse."

"I second that," Ariadne agreed, nodding enthusiastically. They left via a different doorway, which had been hidden from view before. They exited the side of Millennium Centre, facing Roald Dahl Plass. She shut the door firmly behind them, and it vanished from sight as if it had never existed.

"Somehow, I appreciate this visit to the Plass a lot more than the last time," Arthur told her. He slid a hand down her back. "Why don't we show you around, walk off the adrenaline?"

Ariadne only then noticed the faint tremor in her hands. "Yes, that's a great idea."

"Let me show you a few of my favorite places growing up," Eames said, warming up to the idea. He grinned at Arthur and Ariadne, liking the idea of telling them things. It hadn't been pleasant, and he had escaped it as soon as he could, but perhaps the telling of things now wouldn't be so hurtful. Maybe he could even try to repair the broken relationships with his cousins.

They didn't get too far from Millennium Centre when Jack, Ianto and Tosh materialized in front of them. "Oh!" Tosh said, smiling happily at them. "You're all right!"

"I took care of your memory monster," Ariadne told them with a smug smile.

"What are you talking about?" Jack asked skeptically. Ianto seemed too busy taking in the sight of the three of them.

She was arm in arm with both Arthur and Eames, they were all touching in a fluid, almost tender manner. That made it all too clear that they craved that kind of physical contact, and their relationship was something more than platonic. Their stances were wildly different than they had been at the beginning of the dream, and the dramatic shift was a lot for Ianto to take in. Having never met them before their arrival at the London safe house, Jack didn't notice the difference in their behavior.

"I made a trap for your monster, caught him in it and then sealed it up. He's in the center of a maze you won't be able to find and doesn't exist. As soon as I wake up, the dream collapses and him right along with it."

Ianto nodded in appreciation. "Elegant."

Jack laughed. "And dreams are exactly the way we're going to solve our other problem, too."

It didn't take long for the six of them to share information about the two halves of the dream. The solution for dealing with the 456 wasn't without risk, but it was inherently less dangerous than approaching the 456 ambassadors directly. One death at their hands was more than enough for Jack to go through. Even the thought of losing Ianto was enough to make him freeze then want to run like hell in the opposite direction.

"They're used to getting what they want," Tosh mused, looking between all of them. "It would never occur to them that someone would actually want to fight, let alone win."

Jack grinned at the others, feeling almost giddy at the thought that Earth had a fighting chance in this debacle. And after his own role in showing the 456 that Earth had something they wanted, he wanted to redeem himself. There would be opportunity to do that after all. "Then let's wake up and get to it."

***  
***


	5. Willing To Dream

Gwen almost couldn't make heads or tails of the excited talk when the others woke. It was almost as if they were speaking an entirely different language. It wasn't difficult to make out the concept that they needed a child to hook up to the machine, as well as to contact their friend Yusuf in Mombasa to see what the child dosing of somnacin would be. The idea would be to simulate a child's brain patterns, which the PASIV could help Jack produce.

"There's still the government to deal with," she reminded them. "They're rounding up the children in a few hours. We'll never be able to save them all."

"If we eliminate the 456 before the roundup time, we will," Jack promised her. "That's the only way we can do this from here."

Eames was on the phone trying to get in touch with Yusuf, pacing excitedly as he spoke. Gwen tuned out that conversation, since most of it didn't make much sense. He and Yusuf seemed to be aware of what was going on, and Eames relayed some parts of the conversation to Arthur, who took notes in a Moleskine he had kept in his jacket pocket. Ariadne was sitting near them, sometimes touching one or the other man if he was getting too tense. Gwen had thought she wasn't involved with either one, but perhaps Ariadne hadn't felt comfortable talking about that sort of thing here when Gwen was still dealing with her grief. She was angry and fragile at once, wavering between feeling guilty at what was probably her role in Rhys' death and the knowledge that she couldn't have saved him even if she had been with him.

There was nothing easy about this situation, nothing she could glean from it and make into a learning point. That was something her mother always used to stress about tragedy, but Gwen was rapidly starting to think her mother was full of shit.

Ianto came up behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder. "Gwen."

She looked up at him and closed her hand over his absently. They were sitting in the living room, and her eyes traveled over to the innocuous looking silver case. It hadn't been very long that the others had been dreaming, but Ianto seemed to carry himself differently already. He seemed older somehow, more tired. "Are you all right?"

"I will be when this is all done." He sat beside her and she looked at him in concern. "I'll make sure you're all right, Gwen. I promise you that. You and the baby won't want for anything."

"Ianto, I couldn't ask you—"

"You're not. I know none of us here are responsible for the attacks on us or what they think of what we've tried to do. I know they won't thank us for we're planning to do next." Ianto leaned in a little, which normally would have made him feel uncomfortable. He still didn't like being overly close to others. "We need to stick together, Gwen. The three of us. We're all that's left of Torchwood, the only thing standing between the people of the world and the creatures out there that would think we're easy prey."

Gwen nodded in understanding. "Yes. I've been thinking the same thing while the lot of you were sleeping away."

"We're family now, the three of us," Ianto said slowly. It was so awkward to say the words aloud, to have to _say_ things, but Gwen needed that. She needed the reinforcement and assurance that words and touch could give. "So I'd help you with whatever you need. And I know Jack will, too. This is our baby now, all of ours, and it's up to the three of us to keep the world safe enough for it to grow up."

Nodding, Gwen blinked away the tears threatening to form in her eyes. "They won't get away with what they've done, I know that. We'll make sure of it."

Ianto leaned forward and kissed her forehead tenderly. He let his eyes slide shut and they sat there for a long moment, soaking in the support. This wasn't the right time to push for more or say anything else. It would be there if she wanted it, if she even realized that it was something he was willing to offer. He probably should have consulted with Jack first, especially given their arguments just days before about labeling their relationship. This felt right, though, and he couldn't imagine Jack having a problem with taking care of Gwen. Whether it turned into a full triad or simply something of a family situation, it didn't matter. The three of them were a single unit, and it had to be protected at all costs.

Jack sat down heavily across from them after pulling up a chair. "Hey, there. Got room for one more in that little huddle?"

Gwen and Ianto separated, a look of guilt on Gwen's face. "Jack, I'm sorry, I—"

He simply reached across the space and pulled her into his lap then held her close. "Hey. Don't you _ever_ tell me you're sorry if you need one of us. You hear me? Everything Ianto just said is true. I've been here for thousands of years now, Gwen. Torchwood is all I've got." He held her face in his hands after pulling back to look her in the eye. "You matter, Gwen. Whatever this is between the three of us, this is family. This is important."

She blinked in response to his intensity. "Oh."

Jack nodded at her, then let her sit back down. "I'm going to head out, see what I can do about getting the next part of our plan to work. You both sit tight until I get back, all right?"

"Jack..." Ianto protested, rising to his feet.

"The worst they can do is kill me. Again." Jack shrugged. "You're both more important right now. If anything happened to either of you..."

They both watched as he left the townhouse in search of a child willing to dream.

***

London was supposed to be a safe city. Its sprawl had different neighborhoods, each with its own culture. Jack had been in London often enough in the past century, and he watched the city change over time. Still, some things always remained the same. The only chance he had of finding a prepubertal child at this time of night would be to head to the poorer neighborhoods of the city and find someone hanging about outside. Either that or trying to break his grandson out of MI5's clutches.

His heart lurched in his chest. He had stayed away from his daughter at her request. Stephen knew him as Uncle Jack on the rare visits he had made. There was no way to explain that Jack was his ageless grandfather; it had been hard enough to explain it to Alice, who still blamed him for everything that had gone wrong with her life. Jack accepted that. There was too much truth in her accusations, and too many agencies wanted him for the secrets he held. She was nothing more than a pawn to them, and Jack couldn't allow her to be used that way. Ironically, being locked away by MI5 could be the only thing keeping Stephen safe. Parliament officials wouldn't use him in any public displays, since that would out Jack's existence. And Jack himself couldn't use Stephen in this plan. However safe Yusuf promised his calculations would be, there was always risk in introducing somnacin into someone so young. It was never designed with a child in mind and no one had ever studied it in children. There weren't even case reports in the literature about how to dose it safely. Yusuf had mentioned dosing a child in the past and gave Eames the parameters he had used. Jack didn't doubt that Yusuf was careful and attentive to his subjects, but Jack didn't want to subject Stephen to this if he could avoid it.

Brixton was an area of London known for its poorer population. There were rundown estates there, and no doubt the government's people would convene there soon. If they had any sense, the children would be hiding.

But it was Brixton. Drugs flowed freely and vandalism was an art form.

It was sad to see a ten year old girl selling hash in an alleyway. Her older sister wasn't that much taller than she was and had only her own body to sell. She was barely into puberty, her breasts nothing more than buds pressing into her thin shirt. Jack knew this was reality, knew that this always happened. It didn't matter what time frame or planet it was. There were always poor people and children that couldn't do much more than this with their lives.

Jack pressed money into the older girl's hand but refused her advances. He looked at the younger girl, who stared back at him bravely. He thought of the other children years ago that had looked at him without fear like this, the orphans that the government knew no one would miss. He thought of Clem, crazed and alone, haunted by that night in the field.

"How would you like to help me stick it to the government?" he asked the younger sister.

The girl's eyes narrowed. "Wha'd'ya want?"

"You know those aliens, the ones that made the children talk?" he asked her. She gave him a grudging nod. "I need to talk back to them and kill them. But I need a child's mind."

"You mean you need to kill her?" the older sister snapped, angrily moving to protect the younger girl. Jack approved mightily.

He smiled at them both. "No. I mean to kill _myself."_

***

The two girls were named Zoe and Emma. Their parents were usually strung out on crack cocaine, and somehow evaded child protective services. The girls took care of themselves and made sure to avoid the care homes. Emma as oldest insisted that Zoe would never have to take on johns, but she was too young to really have much interested clientele. Selling drugs seemed to be a good enough compromise in her eyes.

She listened to Eames recount the plan with narrowed eyes. Zoe looked excited by the concept of dreaming and creating an entire world to play in. She had never really been far from Brixton before, and the closest she had seen large amusement parks or zoos was on television. She would do it if it was up to her, risks be damned. Emma was the one that put the brakes on that, and wanted the full explanation of the risks. "She's my sister," she had hissed at the assembled adults. "She's _my_ responsibility."

The various computers and monitors all around the safe house's living room didn't really inspire much confidence in her. "I won't pretend there's no risk," Eames said finally. His voice carried its usual odd accent, likely an amalgam of all the dialects he had to learn over the years. There were a few words that seemed to echo Emma's Brixton speech. "My friend's utterly brill, I promise you. He's done this before, with a boy maybe your age. I don't know the whole story, but he did nothing but scream and scream all day. My friend told me that much. His parents brought him to my friend when all the doctors couldn't do anything about it."

Emma looked at him with a grudging expression, like she understood this was a true story but still didn't want to believe it. "And?"

"My friend took him aside and let him down into a dream with someone he trusted. Wasn't me, and what happened in the dream isn't my story to tell. But the boy didn't scream anymore. He started talking then, telling his parents all the filthy things that were happening in his head to make him scream like that. He was sick, with awful dreams that wouldn't leave him alone even when he woke up. The woman that went in with him, my friend Yusuf told me that she threw up and couldn't go down into a dream for days." Eames spoke with an almost lulling tone, belying the horror that the incident must have been. He rested his hands on her shoulders. "This is different from that. Your sister's healthy and relatively happy, as happy as you can be in Brixton, yeah?" Emma gave him a faint smile. "No nightmares are waiting for her, then. But we need him," Eames continued, nodding toward Jack, "to think like a child."

"My sister's not going to be harmed?" Emma asked again, staring at Eames intently.

"On my life she won't be," he assured her, his speech mirroring hers a bit more.

"You gave me money even though you turned me away," Emma said abruptly, looking at Jack. She frowned at him. "Why?"

"So you can get something to eat when this is done," he replied with a shrug. "You're both too skinny out there."

Emma pursed her lips as she took in the others in the room. Her eyes lit on Zoe's upturned and hopeful face. It was different from theirs; the adults hoped she would acquiesce so nameless children all over the globe wouldn't be sacrificed. It was a concept she didn't quite comprehend. But Zoe was hoping she would agree because she wanted to dream. She wanted to experience this miracle in a suitcase, wanted to be something more than a slip of a girl in an alleyway in Brixton breaking the law to get something to eat.

"All right, Zoe. But I don't leave this room."

"Of course not," Jack assured her with a nod. "That's why I brought you, too."

She settled onto the couch beside her sister, arms crossed beneath her budding breasts and her lower jaw thrust out stubbornly.

Ianto shot Gwen an amused look. "You know, I think she reminds me of you." That earned him a swat on the arm and an amused smile as Eames and Arthur got to work. Zoe was looking through various sketches Ariadne had done to pass the time, and was particularly delighted with a landscape of a meadow and lake. It was fairly obvious that it would be the location that she wanted to dream of.

Jack went over the use of the computer and his vortex manipulator with Gwen and Ianto. They would handle the frequency feedback loop as Eames and Arthur monitored the PASIV and somnacin administration. Initially that plan left Ariadne with nothing to do, but now she could occupy Emma's attention.

Emma watched closely as the needles were inserted, as the button was depressed. Zoe slept first, as she was the dreamer. Jack followed a fraction of a second later. He was the subject, the one the pulled into Zoe's dream. It would force his brainwaves to synchronize with hers once he was fully immersed in her dream. That never took long to do, so by the time the computers were attached to the vortex manipulator, Jack was immersed and ready for the feedback loop.

The loop was small at first, nothing more than a vague, oscillating whine. It spiraled up in volume and intensity, until it was almost unbearable to listen to. Jack's body shook on the floor, looking as though he was experiencing a grand mal seizure. His arms and legs flopped about, knocking into the couch where Emma was sitting with a pale face. Zoe slept on beside the PASIV, oblivious. Sweat broke out along Jack's skin, and he was hot to Arthur's touch. He looked at Eames in concern, but they kept their mouths shut. The needles had been taped into place and Jack wasn't in danger of pulling them out. Ianto increased the intensity of the projected frequency, lips thinned and expression unhappy.

Jack writhed as the tremors moved to include his torso. It was a grotesque mockery of dancing, his mouth falling open as if he wanted to scream. No sound came out; his diaphragm spasmed and there was no way he could take a full breath. His core temperature rose higher and the thrashing grew more extreme. Emma buried her face into the crook of her arm so that she wouldn't have to watch, and Ariadne pulled the girl against her. Ianto and Arthur kept watching over Jack, but Gwen and Eames couldn't. They looked away, both of them appearing ill. After a moment, Gwen had to rush into the bathroom to vomit.

They were all watching Jack die. It was their fault for agreeing to this mad plan and they were letting it happen.

It was almost a relief when Jack's body finally gave out. He had been in status epilepticus for nearly fifteen minutes at that point, and it had been painful to watch.

Eames withdrew the needles from Jack's arm and placed them in the sharps container within the PASIV's briefcase. Arthur started reducing the somnacin slowly so that Zoe would have a more natural waking period, minimizing the disorientation that could come.

Everyone sat back and watched, waiting to see what would happen.

Zoe's eyes opened just as Jack gasped back to life, his own eyes snapping open as he jerked into an upright position. He looked around wildly at everyone in the room, taking in Emma's tears and how she had burrowed into Ariadne's side for comfort. The others all looked drawn to varying degrees. Only Zoe still had a smile on her face. "That was _amazing!"_ she cried with delight. "Can I do that again?"

Emma burst into tears and let Ariadne rock her wordlessly. Gwen and Ianto looked down to dismantle the connections between the vortex manipulator and the computers. Arthur looked decidedly ill as he disconnected Zoe and Eames merely shook his head.

Zoe looked around the room in bewilderment. "Was it something I said?"

Jack moved to the television that they had all ignored. His limbed moved seamlessly, no sign of the seizure activity. Snapping it on, he sat back on his haunches and watched the screen avidly. A special news report had overridden the usual programming. According to the ticker at the bottom of the screen, the scheduled inoculations of the country's children were being cancelled. The young reporter was discussing the sudden death of the 456 ambassador at Thames House and the loss of communications with the hovering ship. There was no mention of the child that the ambassador had been attached to, but Jack could only imagine that he was dead as well. Their life support systems had been interlinked, after all.

All of the other children were likely dead as well. They were dead because of him, even if he wasn't the one to do it personally. He had led them to slaughter, and now they were dead to save millions more.

"It's done," he murmured, looking back at the others. "We did it."

No one but Zoe felt like celebrating.

***

"So now what will you do?" Emma asked as Gwen and Ianto took over the kitchen of the safe house to cook. Eames had ducked out with Zoe to get more supplies; he had been somewhat surprised that Emma was willing to let a stranger walk off with her sister after her earlier suspicion, but thought perhaps it was because he took the time to discuss things with her. Arthur had gone off to find a few contacts of his that were based in London. Jack simply sat in the living room staring at the wall and Ariadne was washing dishes as they were dirtied.

"I don't know. Rebuild, I suppose. Don't know how to stay safe if the government won't support what we're doing any longer," Gwen mused, brows knit as she thought aloud.

"They didn't mention you lot," Emma reminded them. "Don't think they're too keen on what you did. If they even know what you did."

"I'm sure they can guess we were involved," Ianto told her dryly. He had decided on French toast and was whisking eggs in a bowl. Gwen had decided on grill cheese sandwiches.

Emma eyed the stove hungrily, telling herself this was why she was still there and not walking back to Brixton. They were willing to feed her and not ask for money in return. She could keep whatever Jack had given her for another day, assuming she could hide it from her parents for long. She had very few hiding places left.

It had nothing to do with her own burning curiosity about what would happen next. None.

"You could leave the country if it gets too difficult," Ariadne told them seriously. "Get forged documents and leave..."

"Who would save them here from their own stupidity?" Gwen replied, looking up from her skillet. She pursed her lips unhappily, then turned back to her task. "There's still a job to do here, even if the idiots in Parliament aren't as concerned about it. If anything, that makes us even more important. Someone has to keep the public safe. It's what we're supposed to do in Torchwood."

"Could you even trust them to do the right thing at this point?" Ariadne asked.

"No," Gwen said after a moment. Ianto had remained silent through the entire conversation. "What do you think?"

He looked up then. "I'm just glad my niece and nephew are fine. They live on an estate, so they would've been rounded up." He looked back down at the vigorous whisking he was doing and slowed down. "This won't be the only alien problem that comes up. You know Parliament won't know how to handle it. Ordinary PC's won't either."

"Then you need to go public," Emma found herself saying. The three others turned to stare at her. "They tried to kill you folks and you still went and saved the children. Worth an honorable mention, it is."

"And enough outcry will force them to reopen Torchwood, won't it?" Ariadne asked.

"They could always say there's UNIT, but that's an international organization. Queen Victoria herself ordered Torchwood's creation," Ianto replied.

"That's right. Nationalistic fervor and all that," Ariadne said, smiling a little.

"Ready to be the public face of Torchwood?" Ianto teased Gwen.

She stared at him with large eyes. "What?!" she sputtered. "What about you?"

"I'm the tea boy," he replied. "Or Eye Candy. No one expects anything serious from me."

"And it can't be Jack, or people will notice he's not aging," Gwen said with a sigh, leaning against the counter.

"How is that possible?" Emma asked, looking between the two of them.

"Not a clue," Gwen said with a sigh. "Doesn't age and he comes back when he dies. All I know for certain is that time travel is involved for that one."

Ariadne blinked; somehow that seemed to be even more fantastic than seeing him come back from the dead right before her eyes. "Right. Probably not a good idea to advertise that part."

"And discussing Torchwood might get funding and personnel. We need people," Ianto said.

"I'll help," Emma blurted. "But, you know, for more pay than a few quid. It's got to be more working for you lot than turning tricks."

Gwen looked almost ill and Ariadne looked at her sadly. "I don't know what you could do..."

"Information gathering," Ianto replied promptly. "Never underestimate what kind of information you can gather from different underhanded networks." Ariadne was immediately reminded of Arthur and smiled. Ianto didn't notice, and looked at Emma in all seriousness. "You and your sister did us a good turn. I'm sure we could do the same for you."

"But no promises just yet," Gwen cautioned when Emma grinned at them. "We're not even officially back to work yet."

"Oh, I'm sure it'll happen," Ariadne said. "Maybe that's what Arthur's up to right now."

It was, in fact, exactly what he was doing.

Parliament was in an uproar about the death of the 456 ambassador, and no one knew what to do in response. Arthur pressed on his contacts to start a whisper campaign about reopening Torchwood and adding staff to it. "If the 456 could come and demand tribute in exchange for our safety, what will the rest of the galaxy do?" the rumors went. "There's only so much that the Doctor can do, even if he can command time and space." The most important one seemed to be "They're the only ones that really know what they're doing about the aliens. UNIT teams stood by with no ideas."

The whispers moved quickly amongst members of Parliament. Some hadn't been overly eager to break up Torchwood in the first place, and were more than happy to spread their thoughts about the utility of having another line of defense against alien technology. John Frobisher killed himself and his daughters in anticipation of the forced "inoculations," so the blame ultimately rested on his shoulders for Torchwood's closure. Parliament had used him as their scapegoat for much of their other policies, so what was one more lie?

Arthur texted Eames and Ariadne, advising them to make a tape recording of what had happened at the safe house. All of the details weren't entirely necessary, which they understood to mean that the PASIV didn't have to be mentioned. He knew someone in broadcasting that could hijack the BBC feeds and put the message on the air. That would keep Parliament from reneging on their current deal. It wasn't much leverage, but it was better than Jack, Gwen or Ianto had on their own.

As the most empathic member of the remaining Torchwood team, Gwen spoke into a web cam describing the 456 and their true intentions, as well as the efforts that Torchwood made in spite of governmental concern. She was vague on their interference, as well as the means they used to eliminate the 456 that hovered over Thames House. She made sure to imply that further alien incursions were likely, and that space time rifts were just as dangerous as extraterrestrial threats that might arise. The footage was then sent to various news outlets in other countries as well as the BBC.

Arthur returned to the safe house several hours later, looking a little tired and rumpled, but pleased. "You're as safe as I can make you," he told Ianto. "Past this, it's all up to the three of you. I've called in all the markers I had for the British Isles."

Ianto gave him a grateful nod. "Thanks, Arthur. It means a lot to me." He looked askance at Eames and Ariadne, who were playing cards with Zoe and Emma. "Take care of my cousin, will you? He's an arse, but he's still family."

Smiling a little, Arthur nodded. "I will. As much as he'll let me, anyway."

Ianto couldn't help but laugh at that. "True, that. He always was bullheaded more than he really had to be."

"Family trait, though," Arthur remarked dryly. He was even more amused when Ianto didn't even try to deny it.

They moved to watch the card game. Gwen was too keyed up to sleep and Jack usually more alert after coming back from the dead. They both kept watch on news channels and internet feeds, trying to determine when it would be safe to leave the house. "Where will you go after this?" Ianto asked Arthur. He noticed how much Arthur watched both Eames and Ariadne more than the actual game.

"Ariadne has a place in Paris. That's close enough to get to first."

"I suppose you'd want to discuss where the three of you would live." Arthur was startled by the remark, but Ianto only shrugged. "The three of us will likely go back to Cardiff. The three of you go all over the world. A home base might be nice. Somewhere large enough for the three of you to live together."

"Ianto..."

"You'd keep them safe," Ianto continued as if he hadn't spoken. He appeared impassive, as if the words didn't matter. The others were listening in, though the two young girls didn't understand the importance. "Not that you need my approval, of course. It seems like an arrangement like that might suit you all."

"I'll take it into consideration," Arthur replied dryly.

"Somewhere warm," Eames piped up. "And with a large international airport."

Ariadne giggled but had no requirements to offer. Arthur shot them the sliver of smile he had at the start of a job. "I can make arrangements."

No doubt there was going to a lot to negotiate, but there was hope in making it work. Sometimes, things fell into place more easily than expected.

The End


End file.
